the climate brief Accurate Reporting of Climate Science

The Met Office has just released a report entitled "why was the start to spring 2013 so cold?", which comes hot on the heels of  extensive discussion in the media about the causes of the cold snap. Here's a brief summary of what the UK's national weather service has to say.

This March was the second coldest since records began in 1910, with provisional figures indicating the average UK temperature for the month was 3.3 degrees Celsius below the 1981 to 2010 long term average.

The Met Office says much of Europe, Russia, Ukraine and the northern USA experienced similarly cold and snowy conditions to the UK.

Why so cold?

The immediate cause was a natural climate fluctuation called the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The NAO switches between two states, and this winter (in its negative phase) saw a southward shift of the  jet stream, bringing cold air over the UK from northern Europe and Russia.

The Met Office identifies three other natural climate variations that may have made the negative NAO phase more likely. 

Read more

The world isn't cleaning up its energy systems despite increasing investment in renewable power, according to a new report. So how has this happened? The answer in one word: coal. 

The International Energy Agency (IEA)'s report, released yesterday, measures carbon intensity, or the amount of carbon dioxide released for each unit of energy consumed around the world. It 

finds that since 1990 carbon intensity has remained "essentially static" - meaning the world is currently heading for six degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels.

Different scenarios 

The agency has created three different scenarios for the future development of the world's energy systems - from "6DS", where temperatures go up by six degrees down to "2DS", where the rise is limited to two degrees.

The 6DS scenario, says the IEA, is "largely an extension of current trends". Under the 4DS and 2DS scenario, expansion of renewables and energy efficiency measures mean that the energy system becomes less carbon intense, limiting greenhouse gas emissions to four degrees and two degrees respectively:

Read more

Sourced under creative commons

National Trust unveils green power plan
The National Trust is to spend up to £35m powering properties with alternative energy sources including wood-fuelled boilers and water turbines - but notably not wind turbines. The Telegraph and the BBC have the story while BusinessGreen looks at the top five planned renewable energy projects.
The Financial Times 

News:

British children 'deeply concerned' about the impact of climate change
A Unicef poll reveals three quarters of 11 to 16 year olds were worried about how global warming will change the world. Two thirds were worried about how children in other countries will be affected, while only one percent said they don't know anything about climate change.
The Guardian

Read more

Pietro Naj-Oleari

The European Parliament yesterday  rejected backloading, a plan to withhold emissions permits from the European Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to combat oversupply in the market. So can the ETS recover? Two experts give their views.

Without backloading, ETS reform may be undermined

Sarah Deblock, policy director for European affairs for the International Emissions Trading Association

Backloading is not new. First known as the set-aside proposal, the European Parliament originally proposed it as a solution to address oversupply in the market around two years ago. So why has the parliament now rejected backloading?

In recent months, MEPs' positions across the political spectrum have fractured. Yesterday, nearly 70 per cent of MEPs in the influential right-of-centre EPP group, 86 per cent of the European Conservatives and Reformists, and 40 per cent of the liberal ALDE group rejected the proposal. Just 19 votes out of a total of 754 swung the decision.

Read more

Credit: Climate Policy Initiative

With international climate change negotiations at an impasse, nations are going it alone to address climate change - and making good progress, according to a new  report.

The research by US thinktank Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) takes an unashamedly optimistic look at the key policy successes of five of the world's major economies - here's a few of the highlights. 

India's renewables

In 2008, the Indian government set an ambitious target of producing 15 per cent of the country's electricity from renewable energy sources by 2020. 

India is aiming to have 4,000 megawatts of solar power contributing the grid by 2017, rising to 20,000 megawatts by 2022. It also aims for 31 gigawatts of wind power by 2017 - almost doubling the amount installed in 2011. But CPI says these targets are ambitious, as renewables technology investment faces "daunting policy and financing problems".

As the graph below shows, most of India's new generation capacity came from conventional sources - particularly coal. In 2010, coal power produced the vast majority of India's nearly 1,000 terawatt hours of energy. So even though renewables are growing quickly, they still have a long way to go to catch up with coal generation.

Read more

Sourced under creative commons

EU parliament rejects plan to boost carbon trading
The European Parliament yesterday rejected a plan to rescue the ailing emissions trading scheme. Green NGOs described the vote as a "monumental failure" to the Guardian. More than 20 Conservative MEPs defied the Prime Minister and voted against the plan,  Business Green reports. The  Telegraph says the scheme is now on the "brink of collapse". 
BBC News 

News:

MPs grill big six energy suppliers over tax contributions
Labour's shadow energy secretary, Caroline Flint, approached each of the 'big six' energy suppliers to get them to disclose their corporation tax contributions. The figures reveal they have been paying little or no tax despite making big profits.
Guardian

Read more

Why has the UK's wintery weather stuck around for so long this year? The question's attracted a good deal of media attention recently, with claims the Met Office has called a rapid response meeting of experts, to get to grips with the question of whether melting Arctic sea ice could be skewing the British weather.

Unusually low temperatures this spring have had many media outlets  asking whether climate change could be causing the prolonged winter weather. In an interview for  ITV news, the Met Office's Julia Slingo said scientists need to understand any possible link " as a matter of urgency".

ITV suggested the Met Office had convened a "meeting of top experts from around the world", with the  Daily Mail claiming an "emergency meeting" had been called. The Met Office has played down this suggestion to us today, but said that it is investigating the issue as part of ongoing research. So how do scientists think climate change and this year's cold spell could be linked?

A meandering jet stream

Dr Jennifer Francis, polar scientist at Rutgers University,  told us how the Arctic could be involved. Temperatures are rising faster in the Arctic than at lower latitudes - known as Arctic amplification. Because of this, the temperature difference between the frozen north and the more temperate mid-latitudes is decreasing. Losing reflective sea ice speeds up Arctic warming - what's known as a positive feedback.

The suggestion is that these changes can weaken the  jet stream - a stream of fast-flowing air in the atmosphere - which could then start to move about more. This could allow cold Arctic air to reach further south, over mid-latitude countries like the UK. Combined, this means wintery conditions could  stay longer in one place.

This is a relatively new area of research and the precise mechanism is far from settled. But it is a topic of very current  research, and the idea that there might be a link between the Arctic and UK weather appears to be gaining scientific support.

Read more

The EU carbon market today suffered a potentially catastrophic blow, as the European Parliament rejected a plan to temporarily breathe new life into the flagging scheme. The news sent the carbon price  tumbling to around €3 per tonne.

Despite some hope that the vote could focus EU efforts to reform its carbon policies, most commentators fear it will prove a major setback for market-based emissions reduction.

Backloading

MEPs today voted by a narrow majority to reject a proposal that would withhold 900 million permits from the EU emissions trading scheme (ETS) - known as backloading. The emissions trading scheme has been in decline for months, with the carbon price hitting  record lowsearlier this year. 

Companies buy and sell permits to emit carbon dioxide in the ETS. If they emit less than their permits allow, they can sell the excess for a profit. The scheme is meant to reward those that cut their emissions, and it relies on a shortage of permits. But the  economic slowdown meant the market became over-supplied, sending the carbon price sliding to  record lows, removing the incentive for polluters to cut their emissions.

Backloading would have reduced the number of permits on the market, which policymakers hoped would boost the carbon price. That plan is now "politically dead", according Marcus Ferdinand from market analysts Reuters Point Carbon.

Today's vote

Today's vote was  expected to be close - and so it proved. 315 MEPs voted for the backloading plan, but 334 MEPs voted against. 

That the vote was decided on just 19 votes shows there are "two equally strong groups of MEPs on either side of the debate", according to Ferdinand. 

Read more

National Climate Policy Progressed in the Last Decade, Despite Stalled Global Negotiations
Climate policy implementation, and its impact, accelerated markedly over the last decade, despite the slow pace of international climate negotiations, says Climate Policy Initiative in a new report, The Policy Climate. The study presents three decades of evidence from five key economies - Brazil, China, India, the EU, and the US.
PR Newswire

News:

Australia urged to formally recognise climate change refugee status
The Refugee Council says recognising those fleeing the effects of global warming as refugees would protect such people in the future. It warns the Australian government to prepare for thousands forced from low-lying Pacific islands.
Global Mail via Guardian

Read more

Sustainability rules won't help reduce biofuels' impact on food security and the environment, according to a new report out today. The paper predicts European targets for adding fuel made from crops to petrol will cost UK motorists £1.3 billion a year by 2020.

According to  research by Rob Bailey at thinktank Chatham House, transport fuel made from crops or vegetable oils is not a cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Biofuel targets have been controversial ever since scientific studies beganindicating that these fuels may have a far higher impact on greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. The government remains committed to the targets, however. 

Read more