Tag: IPCC

A N-ICE trip to the North Pole: Understanding the link between sea ice and climate

Posted on by janet.crompton

Imagine. It’s the bitter Arctic winter, it’s dark, cold enough to kill, and your ship is stuck in sea-ice.  There’s nothing you can do against the heave of the ice, except let your ship drift along. Out of your control. This seems like a difficult prospect today, but then imagine it happening over a century ago.

This is exactly what did happen when Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen, intentionally trapped his ship, Fram, in Arctic sea-ice in 1893 in an attempt to reach the North Pole. For about three years, Fram drifted with the ice until finally reaching the North Atlantic. Whilst a main motivation for their extraordinary journey was to find the Pole, they also made a number of scientific observations that had a profound influence on the (at the time) young discipline of oceanography.

Scientists led by the Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) are now – pretty much on the 120th anniversary of the original expedition – repeating the journey, this time purely in the name of science.  I’m a member of the international team, meaning that the University of Bristol gets to play its part.

View from near the Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø, at about
2.30pm in the afternoon! Tromsø is on a small island,
surrounded by beautiful mountains, but has very long, dark winters.

The group I’m working with are investigating the role of newly formed sea-ice and freshwater on the flow of heat and nutrients through Arctic oceans, which plays a key role in regulating climate both locally and on a global scale.  The sea-ice in the Arctic is diminishing at an alarming rate, with between 9.4 and 13.6% decline per decade in the perennial sea-ice from 1979 to 2012 according to the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report [1]. If we are to understand how the sea-ice might change in the future, and what impact this might have on other systems, we have to be able to understand the physics of the system today.

My role is to help to chemically analyse the seawater, in order to trace the freshwater input to the oceans.  The amount of freshwater will determine the density of the water, and so will control the degree of stratification or sinking, which will be important for the transport of heat.

In November, I went to visit the Norwegian Polar Institute in Tromsø in the very north of Norway for a pre-cruise workshop.  I got to meet a number of the Norwegian Young Sea-Ice (N-ICE2015) team, and visit Norway – a place I’d never been before as Antarctica is my usual stomping ground! We had two days of learning about the scientific interests of all the group members, and finding our way around some of the high-tech instrumentation that we will have at our disposal. I also got a tour of the ship that N-ICE2015 will use: the R/V Lance. By the end, everyone was keen to set off – although everyone will now have to wait until January…

This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Kate Hendry, Earth Sciences, University of Bristol.

Further information

You can find out more about N-ICE2015 at the project website.

[1] Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group 1 Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2013.

Report from a (slightly less-depressed) climate scientist on the All Parliamentary Climate Change Group meeting on “stranded assets”

Posted on by janet.crompton
Synthesis Report of the IPCC. Image credit IPCC

Lets face it, it’s fairly depressing being a climate scientist.  The Synthesis Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was adopted by the world governments last Sunday (2 November 2014). This report drew on the three individual reports published over the last year on the Science, Impacts and Mitigation of climate change, all of which I was proud to contribute to.  Yet apart from a few comments from the global great and good on the urgency of the situation and the need to move away from fossil fuels to avoid changes that will be dangerous for mankind and nature alike, it made relatively little headlines. I was wondering if it would really make any difference to anything that anyone does. I will still dread Daily Mail-reading cab drivers asking me what I do for a living, as it’s disheartening to try and explain the science to someone who has far more pressing and immediate concerns and would rather not think about, let alone believe, what we scientists repeatedly say, stronger, louder, and with far richer detail, but basically unchanged over the last 20 years.

So I was really encouraged, if not elated, after attending the All Parliamentary Climate Change Group meeting on “Stranded Assets: How can policy makers act to ensure economic stability while reducing emissions?”.  It wasn’t just that it was fun to be at the Houses of Parliament on the 5th November.  It seems that certain parts of the financial sector are taking climate risk extremely seriously and advising that investment in the fossil fuel industry (where 15 to 20% of UK pension investments are placed) is no longer the safe bet it used to be, that the risks are too high and that investors should better put their money into “clean” alternatives such as renewables.

What are ‘stranded assets’?

These are assets that succumb to unanticipated devaluation due to technology change, consumer change, regulatory change etc.    In other words, investments in large infrastructure fossil fuel projects could become devalued in the future due to factors such as increasing capital costs of fossil fuels (e.g. due to extraction, regulation, carbon pricing, costs of using carbon capture and storage technology), decreasing costs of competitive renewables, and increasing direct physical risks to the industry from climate impacts.  Thus investing in them is more risky than many investors take account of, as such risks do not currently have to be disclosed.  The Carbon Tracker Initiative have published reports on this, managing to take the science and talk in the language of the financial industry to present a convincing argument for why and how to reassess business models and investment portfolios.

One may easily argue that the Carbon Tracker Initiative was set up to solve the challenge of moving away from fossil fuels through actions within the capital market, so they are bound to say this. But it seems some very established Institutions feel the same.  Just a few weeks ago the Rockefeller Foundation, that initially built their fortune on the back of oil, announced that it was going to move away from investment in fossil fuels and switch to clean technology investment.  Last month at the World Bank, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England warned investors to avoid the “carbon bubble” of stranded fossil fuel assets, as many governments (e.g. Norway and Sweden), businesses and individual wealthy investors commit to divesting away from fossil fuels. The organisation 350.org, having successfully persuaded many companies in the USA to divest, is putting pressure on UK businesses. Edinburgh University has signed up…take note Bristol – is this something we should do?

As Tim Yeo, Chairman of the Energy and Climate Change committee put it, the science is accepted.  The fact that we have to keep within the trillion tonnes of CO2 emissions to avoid “dangerous” changes above 2 degrees seemed to be widely accepted among the various political and financial bodies represented at the meeting.  Cost is now the issue, and those countries (and businesses) that reduce early will have enormous economic benefit.  Is everyone else as convinced? Well sadly not everyone, but at least if enough investors start to move they can lead the governments, which is more of an encouraging prospect than holding out for global agreement and strong action from the governments in Paris next year.
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This blog is written by Dr Jo House, Cabot Institute, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.  Jo is a Leverhulme Research Fellow looking at the role of the terrestrial biosphere in climate change and climate mitigation.

Jo House

A brighter future for India’s energy sector?

Posted on by janet.crompton

In 2001, the Kutch District of Gujarat, India was struck by a magnitude 7.7 earthquake which killed around 20,000 people and destroyed nearly 400,000 homes. The total property damage was estimated at $5.5 billion and had a disastrous effect on what was already an ailing economy. In the aftermath of the earthquake, Narendra Modi, a member of the right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), became the Chief Minister of Gujarat and led the region out of darkness and into economic growth and prosperity. By 2007, Gujarat contained 5% of the total population yet accounted for 25% of total bank finance in India and continues to outpace growth in other states. Indeed, when I visited Kutch in January, it was clear that there was a growing and aspirational middle class population. Modi was recently elected Prime Minister of India, triumphing over Rhaul Ghandi, a member of the centre-left India National Congress (INC) Party, and with it became one of the most powerful players in the fight against climate change. So what does the future hold for the Indian energy sector?

Previous examples suggest that Modi wants to embrace the clean energy model. As Chief Minister of Gujarat, Modi bankrolled the largest single-location solar plant in Asia with an operating capacity of 55 megawatts and launched the first Asian governmental department dedicated to climate change. Before 2012, Gujarat had the highest share of renewable energy sources in India (~14%) and as Prime Minister, Modi plans to use solar power to supply energy to approximately 400 million people who still lack basic access to electricity. Yet some have accused Modi of losing interest in his solar revolution following his failure to submit an action plan for the Prime Ministers National Climate Change Action Plan in 2013.

Despite the solar revolution, India still generates 60-70% of its energy from non-renewable sources. The dominant non-renewable resource is coal which accounts for 40% of total energy production. Yet, output from Coal India Ltd, the largest coal producing company in India, has stagnated over the past few years and has consistently missed targets. If Modi is to revive coal production in India he has to address a number of issues including infrastructure, corruption and a lack of pricing power. Failure to meet last years target was also partly attributed to cyclone Phaline and monsoon flooding. This is also likely to affect future coal production; all IPCC models and scenarios predict an increase in both the mean and extreme precipitation of the Indian summer monsoon.

Although sitting on huge reserves of coal, India also has to import a staggering amount of coal. Last year, 152 million tons of coal were imported, an increase of 21% on last year, while only China and Japan imported more. In order to decrease their dependence on coal, India have began hunting for domestic oil reserves. Alternatively, Modi has spoke of strengthening ties with Russian President, Vladimer Putin, with the possibility of developing a Russian pipeline through the Altai region into northwest China and, eventually, to northern India. Although this would be a costly procedure, it may be easier to forge a relationship with Russia rather than China, who are India’s closest competitors in the energy market.

So what does this mean for India’s energy sector? Ultimately, coal will likely remain the backbone of India’s energy sector. This is problematic because coal generates nearly twice as much carbon dioxide for every megawatt-hour generated when compared to a natural gas-fired electric plant. In his rush for economic prosperity, will Modi forget about his solar revolution? On Monday, President Obama will unveil a plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants by as much as 25%, with an emphasis on reducing emissions from coal. If this is achieved, the US will have greater leverage over India and other heavy polluters such as China. Will this encourage Modi to reduce India’s reliance on coal? For now, I remain somewhat optimistic.

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This blog was written by Gordon Inglis, a 3rd year palaeoclimatology PhD student working in the Organic Geochemistry Unit within the School of Chemistry. This post was originally published on his own blog http://climategordon.wordpress.com/. You can also follow him on twitter @climategordon 

Your planet needs you!

Posted on by janet.crompton

We are under attack. Our assailants threaten to kill millions of people, destroy our homes and wipe out our crops. Who are these fiends?

Us.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) focusses on how we can stop runaway climate change before it’s too late.  Despite our “best efforts”, anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have continued to increase at an alarming rate. The IPCC estimates that without any additional effort to reduce emissions, we’re looking at a rise in temperature of between 3.7 and 4.8°C by 2100, although variability in the effects of climate change mean the rise could be as high as 7.8°C. Anything over 2°C means we risk runaway climate change with catastrophic effects felt around the world.

A call to action

The UK energy secretary Ed Davey responded to yesterday’s IPCC press conference by stating,

“we need a worldwide, large-scale change to our energy system if we are to limit the effects of climate change”

and called for an international effort to reduce carbon emissions by 2015.

The question is, are politicians willing to put in the effort needed to reduce emissions by 40-70% in the next couple of decades? It’s hard to put a price on the cost of mitigation, but as Professor Ottmar Edenhofer, co-chair of the IPCC team, stated “Climate policy is not a free lunch”. His colleague Professor Jim Skea was more optimistic, saying that,

“it is actually affordable to do it and people are not going to have to sacrifice their aspirations about improved standards of living”.

That’s the kind of thing that politicians like to hear.

Change doesn’t happen unless something dramatic happens to force us to act. The increasing frequency of extreme weather events doesn’t seem to be working, so what would? As the IPCC brief states, “Emissions by any agent (e.g. Individual, community, company, country) affect other agents”. We need to invoke some Blitz mentality; we ARE facing a deadly enemy and we ALL need to do our part to stop it.

How to mitigate climate change

The IPCC used 10,000 scientific references to ensure that their models are properly founded in science and all the uncertainty that entails. The IPCC defined mitigation as “a human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases”, and look at a range of scenarios to find the most effective and efficient methods.

The report particularly favoured low carbon energy sources as a major way to reduce emissions, using natural gas as a transition fuel into renewable energies. Encouragingly, renewable energy comprised over half of all new electricity-generating developments globally, with wind, hydro- and solar power leading the way. The costs of renewable energies are falling, making them viable for large scale deployment in many areas, and Professor Skea enthused that

“Renewables are going to be ubiquitous no matter which part of the world you look at”.

Cities will play a big part in reducing CO2 emissions too; a combination of better urban planning to incorporate public transport and compact walkable city centres will be vital. The report also recommended high speed rail networks between cities to reduce short haul air travel and its associated high emissions.

Replanting forests will be an important way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Plants take in CO2 for use in photosynthesis, but can also be used to remove pollutants from the air and soil, as well as preventing soil erosion and providing important habitats for other plants and animals.

It is important for all nations that mitigation does not mean a halt to economic development. Dr. Youba Sokona, IPCC team co-chair, said, “The core task of climate change mitigation is decoupling greenhouse gas emissions from the growth of economics and population”. This will be the main challenge for governments around the world, but the overwhelming message from the IPCC is that mitigation is affordable, whilst doing nothing is not.

Social justice

There has been an undercurrent of unease alongside the IPCC report; the sticky question of who, exactly, is going to pay for this mitigation? A few days before its release, pressure from unspecified developed nations led to the removal of a section in the IPCC report stating that developing countries should receive billions of dollars a year in aid to ensure that they grow their economies in a sustainable way.

The argument centres on whether developing nations should have the right to exploit fossil fuels to expand their economies, as developed countries were able to do. Dr. Chukwumerije Okereke, one of the lead authors of the report, said that this “is holding them down from developing”, believing that “this is reinforcing historical patterns of injustice and domination”. I would argue that with the impacts of climate change predicted to affect those in developing countries most drastically, perhaps we should adopt the mentality that we are all in this together and help each other to overcome the problem.

Act now

The take home message from the IPCC is that if we act now, we can probably prevent hitting the 2°C temperature increase that would have disastrous consequences for us all. The mitigation strategies suggested are affordable and certainly cheaper than dealing with the consequences of climate change. Will politicians and all the rest of us do our parts to drastically reduce carbon emissions? Only time will tell. A lot of hope rests on the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, which is hoped to yield a global agreement on climate to avoid passing the 2°C safety threshold.

Cross your fingers and turn off your lights.

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This blog is written by Sarah Jose, Cabot Institute, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

 

You can follow Sarah on Twitter @JoseSci 
Sarah Jose

Climate change in the media

Posted on by janet.crompton

This winter, devastating floods and extreme weather have battered the UK.  Similarly, we have been battered by an endless barrage of news, opinion and political grandstanding.  Encouragingly, a narrative is beginning to emerge that now is the time for disaster management not a complete dissection of our short- and long-term flood defense system (an opinion we have advocated ourselves). That is encouraging.

It is vital that the issue of climate change be a central part of that discussion. Climate change is one of the most profound challenges facing humanity – a challenge recognised by scientists, politicians, lawyers, businesses and even the military. However, it is a challenge associated with uncertain and complex consequences, with the most pernicious concerns not necessarily being climate change itself but how it exacerbates other issues, such as flooding but also food security, access to resources, the spread of disease and fostering conflict.  It cannot sit in isolation from the rest of the news, and it demands nuanced exploration by the media that facilitates the responsible formation of opinion and policy.

UK aid supplies are loaded onto HMS
Daring by UK military personnel in the
Philippines after Typhoon Haiyan.
Credit: Simon Davis/DFID/Flickr

Experts (including but certainly not limited to academics), the public and the media form a triangle around policy makers, ultimately influencing the decisions that our governments make.  Most government decision makers genuinely want to enact policies that will be beneficial, but they must make those decisions in a sometimes confusing storm of information and misinformation, opinions and ideology, and short-term political imperatives.  Therefore, experts, the public and the media should work together – although the members of the Cabot Institute provide advice directly to government, we must also help foster the political climate that allows the best, evidence-based decisions to be made.

Given the complexity of climate change issues, I have been pleased to see some parts of the media adopting a more sophisticated discussion of the topic. For example, fewer journalists have asked whether climate change ‘caused’ Typhoon Haiyan or the UK’s severe winter storms and more have asked how climate change might affect such events in the future and how that might impact food prices. More are discussing how the extreme winter will exacerbate the refugee crisis in Syria. These are subtle but important expansions of the media conversation that reveal an increasing understanding of probability and the multiplication of risk.

Credit: Jackl

However, media sins persist, many of them specific to climate change but arising more generally from the external factors that have transformed the entire industry over the past two decades: a need for ratings, a need to entertain, and (most damaging in the case of environmental issues) a rapid news cycle that is better at responding to current events than in depth analysis and long-term considerations.  This has been particularly illustrated by both the media and political reaction to the floods of this past winter.

Most frustrating is the persistence by some parts of the media in creating a debate on the scientific evidence for climate change – a debate that does not exist but presumably enhances the entertainment value of the discussion.  I’m not opposed to debate.  In fact, I am eager for more rigorous, fact-based debate on this and other issues.  This is where the academic community and media could come together and bring real value to our community. But it is deeply frustrating to become entrained in non-debates regarding the underlying physics of global warming and the greenhouse effect, when there are important discussions about how much warming will occur, what the consequences will be and the cost-benefit of different policy decisions.  To its credit, media coverage is increasingly moving in that direction and ongoing coverage much better reflects the balance of scientific opinion.

However, in the aftermath of big climate news events, such as the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report or a spate of unusually cold weather, this non-debate is resurrected.  At these times, it is frustrating that the media rarely acts as a moderator of baseless and factually incorrect claims – on both sides of the topic.  Lobbyists and pundits are allowed to repeatedly state that the IPCC report is ‘mumbo jumbo’  or that the science of climate change is a ‘conspiracy’.  It is not entirely the climate deniers who abuse evidence; some advocates for climate change action, with whom I am sympathetic, describe a ‘climate apocalypse’ or ‘climate breakdown’, fearsome concepts that upon scrutiny mean nothing scientifically.  Unfortunately, the policy of some organisations (I’m looking at you, USA Today) mandates that any editorial comment on climate change requires equal space for the opposite opinion; it is analogous to an editorial on the space programme being counterbalanced by an opinion from the Flat Earth Society. Some media agencies are adapting; Paul Thornton, the LA Times letters editor, refuses to run letters in the newspaper from some climate sceptics in order ‘to keep errors of fact off the letters page.’  There are important discussions to be had, but these will be forgotten if we become mired in debates over putative hoaxes, conspiracies or divine judgement of our hedonistic lifestyle.

One way forward is to bring more creativity to the conversation by bringing in new expert voices.  As with many other policy debates, the climate change discussion has become ossified into rather turgid and unhelpful patterns: scientists vs sceptics, environmentalists vs business.  These are poor representations of the actual issue.  Insurance companies are deeply concerned about climate change.  Our military believes that climate change could exacerbate future conflicts.  Religious leaders believe that preventing climate change that disproportionately harms the poorest of the planet is an ethical issue.  I would urge the media to ignore the uninformed but highly opinionated partisans who put themselves out there, and instead seek out the quiet but knowledgable voices of those who truly understand the challenges facing us and have firsthand understanding of the economic and social consequences.  Similarly, I would urge the academic community to focus not only on our expertise – expertise that while deep is often narrow –and explore collective expertise with some of our partners.  We should be doing our part to invigorate the conversation by bringing together different cohorts of knowledge.

The most pernicious challenge, however, and one exemplified by the media coverage of the devastating floods that we have experienced this winter, is the fickle nature of the news cycle.  Climate change is covered in a sporadic and ad hoc manner – in the aftermath of a severe storm or the release of a new finding.  Climate change should not be headline news once a year but rather a continuous part of the news cycle, reflecting its widespread impact on our environment and lives. Encouragingly, this is the trend; a quick survey of the BBC website reveals that articles reflecting on climate change are published every few days.  What is missing is a more long-term perspective – how will climate change make typhoons worse in twenty years, how could it exacerbate unrest in parts of the world already stressed by ethnic or religious tensions, will it cause greater instability in global food markets? This is the information the public needs in order to make informed personal and political decisions.

Tamsin Edwards

This change in dialogue also requires a change within the academic community.  We tend to think about engagement in the same way that we think about our other academic outputs – discrete publications containing discrete results and leading to discrete press releases.  With a few notable exceptions, such as our own Tamsin Edwards, we are less skilled in commenting on the wider issues.  This partly occurs in IPCC reports, but that alone is insufficient because it is infrequent and a synthesis of the literature, such that it is less engaged with current events or specific ongoing policy decisions.

In short, academics need to recognise our roles as well-informed experts and enter the public dialogue.  There is an ongoing and legitimate debate whether climate change scientists should comment on specific policy, but it is glaringly evident that we should be injecting climate change into the conversation where it is relevant, on topics as far-ranging as flooding, land use and planning, sustainable energy, global insecurity and agricultural strategies.  We do not have all of the answers.  Sometimes our most important contribution is raising unasked questions.  We do not have to work alone; we can build coalitions of knowledge.   But no matter how we do it, we must work with the media – all parts of the media – to share what we have learned.

This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute.

Prof Rich Pancost

A brief introduction to how Bristol’s plant science might save the world

Posted on by janet.crompton

Global crop yields of wheat and corn are starting to decline, and the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests things are only going to get worse.

Last year I looked at previous research into what climate change might mean for global crop yields and found that overall crop yields would remain stable but regional declines could prove devastating for certain parts of the world. The definitive new report from the IPCC finds that actually a temperature rise of just 1°C will have negative impacts on the global yields of wheat, rice and maize, the three major crop plants. Food prices could increase by as much as 84% by 2050, with countries in the tropics being much more badly affected than northern Europe and North America.

All over the world, research is underway to find sustainable ways to feed the growing population. Scientists within the Cabot Institute’s Food Security research theme are working on a range of problems that should help us manage the threat that climate change presents.

Improving crop breeding

The average increase in yields of the world’s most important crops is slowing down, which means that supply is not keeping up with demand. Professor Keith Edwards and Dr. Gary Barker are leading UK research into wheat genomes, developing molecular markers linked to economically important traits. These markers are often Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs), which are single letter differences in the DNA code. It’s possible to find SNPs linked to areas of the genome associated with disease resistance or increased yield, allowing breeders to rapidly check whether plants have the traits they are looking for.

Wheat is a vital crop for UK agriculture as well as global food security.

Water use in plants

Climate change means that many parts of the world will face extreme weather events like droughts. Clean, fresh water is already an increasingly valuable resource and is predicted to be a major source of global conflict in the future.

Plants produce microscopic pores known as stomata on their leaves and stems, which open to take in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis but close in drought conditions to prevent excess water loss from the plant. Professor Alistair Hetherington’s group looks at the environmental conditions that affect stomatal formation and function, which will help to determine how droughts or higher carbon dioxide levels might affect crop productivity in the future and how we might enhance their water use efficiency.

Professor Claire Grierson’s group are working on root development, another important factor in managing how plants use water. Plants produce elongated root hairs which extend out into the substrate, increasing the root surface area in order to absorb more water and nutrients. If we can understand how root hairs are produced, we may be able to breed plants with even more efficient roots, able to extract enough water from nearly-dry soil in periods of low rainfall.

Each root hair is a single elongated cell that hugely increases a plant’s ability to take up water.

Preventing disease

 

Mycosphaerella graminicola is a wheat
pathogen that greatly reduces yield,
posing the biggest risk to wheat production worldwide.

A particular concern of climate change is that diseases may spread to new areas or be more destructive than they used to be. Professor Gary Foster and Dr. Andy Bailey are leading research into a variety of fungal and viral plant pathogens, which are responsible for devastating crop yields around the world. They use new molecular techniques to determine exactly how diseases begin and what treatments are effective against them, information that will be vital as plant disease patterns change across the world.

Crop pollination

It is still unclear whether climate change is affecting bees, however some research suggests that flowers requiring pollination are getting out of sync with bees and other pollinators. This might not be a problem for wind-pollinated crops like maize and barley, or self-pollinators like wheat and rice, however most fruits and oil crops rely on pollinators to transfer pollen from plant to plant. Dr. Heather Whitney researches the interaction between plants and their pollinators, particularly focussing on how petal structure, glossiness and iridescence can attract foraging bees.

Plants in a warmer world

As the planet warms, the IPCC has shown that there will be an overall decrease in crop productivity. Climate change has had an overall negative impact on crops in the past 10 years, with extreme droughts and flooding leading to rapid price spikes, especially in wheat. Dr. Kerry Franklin is investigating the interaction between light and temperature responses in plants. High temperatures induce a similar reaction in plants to that of shade; plants elongate, bend their leaves upwards and flower early, which is likely to reduce their overall yield. We need to understand the benefits and costs of plant responses to temperature, and look  for alternative growing approaches to maintain and hopefully even increase crop yields in a warmer world.

What does the future hold?

The IPCC report shows that if nothing changes, we are rapidly heading towards a global catastrophe. Food production will drop, which combined with the increasing population means that billions of people could face starvation. The IPCC is keen to highlight that new ways of growing and distributing food may mitigate some of the consequences that we can no longer avoid, and a key part of that is understanding how plants (and their pathogens) will respond to changes in temperature, water availability and increases in CO2.
The research by some of the University of Bristol’s plant scientists, highlighted above, should provide important knowledge that plant breeders can utilise to develop and grow crops more suited to the daunting world that climate change will present.
This blog is written by Sarah Jose, Cabot Institute, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

You can follow Sarah on Twitter @JoseSci 

Sarah Jose

Environmental uncertainty: A challenge to both business and vulnerable communities

Posted on by janet.crompton

In September, the IPCC published the Fifth Annual Report on the Physical Basis of Climate Change.  It devotes little attention to the human and ecological impacts of global environmental and climatic change, topics that will be addressed by working group reports released in early 2014 .  Nonetheless, the trajectory of climate and other environmental changes and their implicit impacts on society are stark. Despite numerous treaties and efforts at mitigation, concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to increase, and at greater rather than diminished rates. If those rates continue they will result in global warming of 3 to 5.5°C by 2100. This in turn, will result in dramatic changes to the global hydrological cycle, including both more evaporation and more rainfall.

A More Uncertain Climate

Flood by Paul Bates

The results will be a more hostile climate for many as land can become either drier or more flood-prone or both, changes exacerbated in coastal areas by sea level rise.  Freshwater supply will also be affected by the forecast changes in climate. The quantity of water flowing in glacier or snow-melt fed river basins will change, affecting around a sixth of the world’s population[i], while coastal freshwater will be contaminated with saline water[ii]. Areas of the Mediterranean[iii], Western USA[iv], Southern Africa[v] and North Western Brazil[vi] are projected to face decreased availability of freshwater.

Key to understanding who will be affected is our ability to predict changes in rainfall, seasonality, and temperature at a regional scale.  However, regional climatic predictions are the most challenging and least certain, especially with respect to the nature and amount of rainfall. For vast parts of the world, including much of South America, Africa and SE Asia, it is unclear whether climate change will bring about wetter or drier conditions. Thus, uncertainty will become the norm: uncertainty in rainfall; uncertainty in weather extremes and seasonality; and most importantly, uncertainty in water resources.

Those combined effects lead to an additional and perhaps the most profound uncertainty for the latter half of the 21st century: uncertainty in food production and access. In the absence of other factors, climate uncertainty and more common extreme events will compromise agriculture at all scales, yielding increased food prices and increased volatility in markets.

 

Impacts on the Poor

Although the human impacts of climate change will be diverse, their effects will be worst for the most impoverished and, by extension, least resilient population groups.  The UN reports that climate change could “increase global malnutrition by up to 25% by 2080.”  And all of this occurs against a backdrop in which access to food is already a challenge for the poorest of the world already a challenge for the poorest of the world [p5], a situation exacerbated by the global financial crash.

These risks to the poorest result from a lack of resources to mitigate harm, lack of power to protect resources, and the global competition for resources.

Those who lack the financial resources to migrate or build more hazard-resistant homes will suffer most from extreme events, as has been sharply illustrated by those suffering most in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.  Those who can least afford to dig deeper wells into more ancient aquifers as water resources diminish will go thirsty.  Subsistence farmers – and those dependent on them – are less resistant to climate shocks (desertification) and adverse weather events (flooding) than commercial farmers.

Land ownership for the poorest is often tenuous, and displacement from land a serious problem for many.  Previous switches to biofuels have led to land competition, resulting in both loss of land to subsistence [p6]  farmers, and diversion of commercial production leading to shortages [p7]  and increased food prices. Within communities, these effects are not evenly spread as marginalised groups, such as women, are the least likely to hold land tenure [p8] .  Similarly, there is increased competition for water [p9]  between peoples, but also between water for industry (including agriculture) and water for drinking. When water is scarce, pollution of fresh water is common, and governance is weak, the poorest are likely to lose out.

 

Image by Mammal Research UnitUniversity of Bristol

Food competition will most likely be exacerbated by other factors: rising demand from a rapidly expanding population and a growing demand for meat from a global ‘middle class’; the increased economic divide between post-industrial and developing nations; the ongoing depletion of soil nutrients and associated impacts on the nutritional value of our food.  The combination of these factors will result in profound impacts on food security. Who decides what gets grown? Who can afford it in the context of global markets and the loss of agricultural land? The poorest members of even the wealthiest societies are the most vulnerable to dramatic and unpredictable changes in food costs[p10] .

‘Wicked Problems’

These issues yield a profoundly challenging ethical issue: the wealthy who are most responsible for anthropogenic climate change, via the greatest material consumption and energy demand, have the greatest resilience to food market fluctuations and the greatest means for avoiding their most deleterious impacts.  Therefore, these issues challenge all governments to dramatically and swiftly act to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the associated climate change.

Unfortunately, many proposed mitigation strategies could also have negative consequences for food prices and availability. Increasing energy prices, such as those brought about by a carbon tax, will be passed onto food prices.  Genetically modified foods could be essential to feeding a growing population, and we would urge that future efforts expand to incorporate a greater degree of climate resilience in crops; however, the patents on those crops can make them financially inaccessible to the poorest nations or build critical dependencies.

Although sustainable agriculture and crops might reduce the impact of climate change and uncertainty in some countries, these solutions can be deleterious for the poorest.  They are more likely to live in regions and areas most negatively affected by climate change, most likely to be relying on subsistence/small scale agriculture and least likely to have access to the global market as consumers.  In other words, a stable global market will be of little direct benefit to them; in fact, most of these populations are likely to face competition for land/water use from globalised markets (for biofuels or commercial farming).  In short, what builds food resilience in one nation might be exposing the most economically vulnerable in another.

In fact, when properly mobilised for the benefit of the community, access to new energy sources – even if in the form of fossil fuels – can be transformative and facilitate the economic growth needed to access increasingly globalised food markets [p12].    Domestic access to gas reduces the need to collect wood for fires, reducing deforestation, improving air quality, and freeing up time for communities to address other development needs.

This is not an argument against mitigation of climate change, but it does need to be balanced against human development needs; and this represents one of the world’s most profound challenges. In some circles, we consider this a ‘wicked’ problem: a problem that has multiple causes, probably in interaction, and where information is incomplete, such that proposed solutions might be incomplete, contradictory, complex and work across multiple causes in complex systems.

Challenges and Opportunities

Biofuel by La Jolla

Wicked problems are not intractable, however, and previous studies of land use for biofuels provide clues as to how a complex solution could be more sustainable for all; well planned switches to biofuels which consider local custom in land tenure can provide more land for agriculture, and reduce deforestation pressure.

In such situations, we argue, solutions which focus on halting or slowing climate change alone, and then coping with the business and development problems that they might create answer the wrong question.  Our challenge to the business (and academic) community, then, is to engage with some wicked questions:

  • What are the business opportunities in improving the social and physical environment?
  • Can the global agricultural system be a single resilient network, rather than a competition?
  • What technology or innovation is needed to support a resilient food network?
  • How can innovative solutions to these challenges generate local income, allowing reinvestment in education and development?

These are difficult questions but they also represent opportunities for development and growth in poor communities.  A world with increasing environmental uncertainty is a challenge for both businesses and vulnerable communities.  But it could also be a shared opportunity for growth and development: to innovate and identify new solutions, to co-invest in local resilience and risk reduction, and to share the growth that arises from more stable communities.

 

[i] Z Kundzewicz, L Mata, N Arnell, P Doll, P Kabat, K Jimenez, K Miller, T Oki, Z Sen & I Shiklomanov, Freshwater Resources and their Manegemtn. Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaption and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, 2007
[ii] R Buddemeier, S Smith, S Swaaney & C Crossland, The Role of the Coastal Ocean in the Disturbed and Undisturbed Nutrient and Carbon Cycles,  LOICZ Reports and Studies Series, 2002, 84
[iii] P Etchevers, C Golaz, F Habets & J Noilhan, Impact of a Climate Change on the Rhone River Catchment Hydrology,Journal of Geophysical Research, 2002, 4293
[iv] J Kim, T Kim, R Arritt & N Miller, Impacts of Increased CO2 on the Hydroclimate of the Western United States, Journal of Climate, 2002, 1926
[v] M Hulme, R Doherty & T Ngara, African Climate Change, Climate Research, 2001, 145
[vi] J Christensen, B Hewitson, A Busuioc, A Chen, X Gao, I Held, R Jones, R Kolli, W Kwon, R Laprise, V Magana Rueda, L Mearns, C Menendez, J Raisanen, A Rinke, A Sarr & P Whetton, Regional Climate Change, The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,2007, 847

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This blog is written by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute and Dr Patricia Lucas, School for Policy Studies, both at University of Bristol.
Prof Rich Pancost

This blog has kindly been reproduced from the Business Fights Poverty blog.

Will global food security be affected by climate change?

Posted on by janet.crompton

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just released an important report outlining the evidence for past and future climate change. Unfortunately it confirms our fears; climate change is occurring at an unprecedented rate and humans have been the dominant cause since the 1950s. Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) has reached the highest level for the past 800,000 years, which has contributed to the increased temperatures and extreme weather we have already started to see.

As a plant scientist, I’m interested in the complicated effects that increased temperatures, carbon dioxide and changes in rainfall will have on global food security. Professor David Lobell and Dr Sharon Gourdji wrote about some of the possible effects of climate change on crop yield last year, summarised below alongside IPCC data.

Increased CO₂

Plants produce their food in a process called photosynthesis, which uses the energy of the sun to combine CO₂ and water into sugars (food) and oxygen (a rather useful waste product). The IPCC reports that we have already increased atmospheric CO₂ levels by 40% since pre-industrial times, which means it is at the highest concentration for almost a million years. Much of this has accumulated in the atmosphere (terrible for global warming) or been absorbed into the ocean (causing ocean acidification) however it may be good news for plants.

Lobell and Gourdji wrote that higher rates of photosynthesis are likely to increase growth rates and yields of many crop plants. Unfortunately, rapid growth can actually reduce the yields of grain crops like wheat, rice and maize. The plants mature too quickly and do not have enough time to move the carbohydrates that we eat into their grains. 

High temperatures

The IPCC predicts that by the end of the 21st century, temperatures will be 1.5C to 4.5C higher than they were at the start of it. There will be longer and more frequent heat waves and cold weather will become less common.

Extremely high temperatures can directly damage plants, however even a small increase in temperature can impact yields. High temperatures means plants can photosynthesise and grow more quickly, which can either improve or shrink yields depending on the crop species (see above). Lobell and Gourdji noted that milder spring and autumn seasons would extend the growing period for plants into previously frosty times of year allowing new growth periods to be exploited, although heat waves in the summer may be problematic.

 
Image credit: IPCC AR5 executive summary
 

Flooding and droughts

In the future, dry regions will become drier whilst rainy places will get wetter. The IPCC predicts that monsoon areas will expand and increase flooding, but droughts will become longer and more intense in other regions.

In flooded areas, waterlogged soils could prevent planting and damage those crops already established. Drought conditions mean that plants close the pores on the leaves (stomata) to prevent water loss, however this means that carbon dioxide cannot enter the leaves for photosynthesis and growth will stop. This may be partly counteracted by the increased carbon dioxide in the air, allowing plants to take in more CO₂ without fully opening their stomata, reducing further water loss and maintaining growth.

 
Image credit: IPCC AR5 executive summary
 

These factors (temperature, CO₂ levels and water availability) interact to complicate matters further. High carbon dioxide levels may mean plants need fewer stomata, which would reduce the amount of water they lose to the air. On the other hand, higher temperatures and/or increased rainfall may mean that crop diseases spread more quickly and reduce yields.

Overall Lobell and Gourdji state that climate change is unlikely to result in a net decline in global crop yields, although there will likely be regional losses that devastate local communities. They argue that climate change may prevent the increases in crop yields required to support the growing global population however.

The effect of climate change on global crop yields is extremely complex and difficult to predict, however floods, drought and extreme temperatures will mean that its impact on global food security (“when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life”) will almost certainly be devastating.

On the basis of the IPCC report and the predicted impact of climate change on all aspects of our planet, not just food security, it is critical that we act quickly to prevent temperature and CO₂ levels rising any further.  

 

This blog is written by Sarah Jose, Biological Sciences, University of Bristol

You can follow Sarah on Twitter @JoseSci
Sarah Jose

Why the Pliocene period is important in the upcoming IPCC report

Posted on by janet.crompton

Critical to our understanding of the Earth system, especially in order to predict future anthropogenic climate change, is a full comprehension of how the Earth reacts to higher atmospheric CO2 conditions. One of the best ways to look at what the Earth was like under higher CO2 is to look at times in Earth history when atmospheric CO2 was naturally higher than it is today. The perfect period of geological history is the Pliocene, which spans from 5.3 – 2.6 million years ago. During this time we have good evidence that the Earth was 2-3 degrees warmer than today, but other things, such as the position of the continents and the distribution of plants over the surface, was very similar to today.

There is therefore a significant community of oceanographers and climate modellers studying the Pliocene, many of whom were in Bristol last week for the 2nd Workshop on Pliocene climate, and one of the main points of discussion was the exact value of CO2 for the Pliocene.

80 top scientists from 12 countries gathered for the 2nd Workshop on Pliocene climate on 9-10 September 2013 at the University of Bristol

The imminent release of the first volume of the 5th assessments of the IPCC is also expected to include sections on Pliocene climate.

Today we published a paper in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A which therefore represents an important contribution to the debate. Several records of Pliocene CO2 do exist, but their low temporal resolution makes interpretation difficult. There has also been some controversy about what these records mean, as some show surprisingly high variability, given what we understand about Pliocene climate.

We sampled a deep ocean core taken by the Ocean Drilling Program in the Carribean Sea. Cores such as this record the ancient envrionment as sediment collects over time like the progressive pages in a book, and by analysing the chemical composition of the layers a history of the Earth System can be discovered. The approach that Badger et al take is to use the carbon isotopic fractionation of photosynthetic algae, which has been shown to vary with atmospheric CO2.

What this study revealed is that atmospheric CO2 was actually quite low, at around 300 ppm for much of the warm period. What was also revealed was that CO2 was relatively stable, in contrast to previous work. This implies that in the Pliocene the Earth must have been quite sensitive to CO2, as small changes in atmospheric CO2 drove changes in climate. The study of Badger et al doesn’t explicitly reconstruct climate sensitivity but it does have important implications for future change.

The paper is published in a special volume of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, edited by Bristol scientists Dan Lunt, Rich Pancost, Andy Ridgewell and Harry Elderfield of Cambridge University. The volume is the result of the Warm Climates of the Past – A lesson for the Future? meeting which took place at the Royal Society in October 2011. The volume can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/PTA2001

This blog is written by Dr Marcus Badger, School of Chemistry, University of Bristol.
Marcus Badger
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