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December 2015 wettest month ever recorded in UK & California braces for two weeks of El Niño storms

06.01.16

News

December 2015 was wettest month ever recorded in UK

The Telegraph

December deluges “smashed” rainfall records as storms Desmond, Eva and Frank brought 230mm of rain across the UK, beating the previous record of 215.7mm set in November 2009. The new Met Office figures, released yesterday, show an average December month sees just 120.2mm. With average temperatures of 7.9C, it was also the mildest December since records began in 1910, noteThe Daily Mail and The Times. A separate Telegraph leads on quotes from Oxford University’s Professor Myles Allen, who said we have ‘changed the odds’ with climate change making wetter and warmer winters more likely. The Guardian speaks to Prof David Reay at the University of Edinburgh, who says: “Temperature and rainfall records will inevitably tumble as climate change intensifies…On the evidence of the past month we are far from prepared.” The Met Office’s Dr Adam Scaife tells BBC News Decembers this wet and warm ‘won’t become norm for decades’, though by then the extremes we experience will be far more severe than they are now, others have pointed out.

California braces for two weeks of El Niño storms

BBC News

Northern California is expected to receive up to 38cm of rain over the next 16 days as a result of the El Niño phenomenon, with up to 60cm of snow falling in the Sierra Nevada mountains. The New York Times has more on the impact of El Niño on the drought-stricken state of California. El Niño has also prompted warnings of flash floods and mud flows in South America, with Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil experiencing the worst flooding in 50 years. The ‘Darth Niño’ now ties with 1997-1998 as the strongest recorded, reports The Daily Mail and AP. Commodities traders will be keeping a close eye on whether a La Niña will follow close behind, says The Financial Times, while Sri Lankan farmers are looking for ways to “turn El Niño pain into gain”, reportsReuters.

Davey accuses government of ‘butchering UK’s renewables on the basis of Alice in Wonderland economics’

BusinessGreen

The former Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Sir Edward Davey, has launched a “blistering attack” on the government over recent revelations that official projections suggest average domestic energy bills will be 7% lower in 2020 than previously thought, largely as a result of falling wholesale electricity prices. Criticising its lack of transparency, Davey says this makes the government’s repeated use of rising energy bills as justification for cutting support for renewable energy look like a “false premise,” adding that it would appear to be “decimating a whole industry, with no convincing hard evidence” to justify its decisions. Carbon Brief uncovered the new information following a long-running request under the Freedom of Information Act. The story has also been picked up by Press Association and Solar Power Portal among others.

A single gas well leak is California’s biggest contributor to climate change

The Guardian

A blown-out natural gas well more than 8,700ft underground in California has now released more than 77,000 metric tons of methane since the rupture was first detected on 23 October, according to the latest assessment by the Environmental Defence Fund. With hundreds of residents forced to evacuate and more than 1,000 set to sue utility company SoCalGas, experts say this could be the largest ever breach in US history. The leak is unlikely to be brought under control before late February, the piece notes. Grist runs through what you should know about the leak, including why it’s taking so long to fix and its impact on climate change.

Drax biomass conversion must comply with EU state aid rules

The Guardian

The European Commission has said it will investigate the UK’s support for converting part of the Drax power station in North Yorkshire to burn biomass in place of coal. This is to ensure it complies with EU state aid rules designed to limit the cost of such support for consumers and make sure certain operators aren’t given an unfair advantage over competitors, the Commission said in a statement. The move comes as a blow to Drax’s hopes of securing lucrative subsidies for its biomass conversion, says The Telegraph. The Commission’s specific concerns centre on the plant’s economic return and whether the demand for wood pellets would distort the market, with the potential negative effects of competition outweighing the positive effects of reaching EU 2020 targets for renewable energy.

Call for flood defence agency to be broken up

The Times

The chairman of the government’s natural capital committee, Dieter Helm, has launched a scathing criticism of the “poorly managed” Environment Agency. Calling it too big, lacking in focus and guilty of a “serious misallocation of resources”, Helm suggests it should be stripped of its responsibility for flood defences. His comments came as MPs prepared to question Sir Philip Dilley, the Environment Agency’s chairman, who has been criticised for remaining on holiday in Barbados during the floods. Helm’s suggestion for a “separate flood defence body with a balance sheet and borrowing capacity” will be considered by a national flood resilience review, due to report this summer, the piece notes.

Comment

The day of the champagne environmentalist has arrived

Andrew Simms, The Guardian

The UK flooding has made for a bleak start a new year but what if there was a seasonal subject that could tell the climate story? The world of wine can seem frivolous but shifting patterns of global production are becoming a bellwether for climate change, says Simms. The UK has “won the climate lottery” for producing some wines, he adds, but success could be short-lived: “As temperatures continue to rise, one projection suggests that by 2080 the south-west will only be good for growing raisins.”

Science

Constraining future terrestrial carbon cycle projections using observation-based water and carbon flux estimates

Global Change Biology

New research suggests the uptake of carbon dioxide by plants, trees and soils might decline more under climate change than previously thought. Using observed data, researchers selected Earth System Models that most accurately simulate the water and carbon cycles on land. Results for the remaining models suggest a substantial decline in how much carbon the land absorbs in future – at least double previous estimates – with an increased probability that land will emit more carbon than it takes up by the end of the century.

Soil carbon sequestration and biochar as negative emission technologies

Global Change Biology

A new study assesses the potential benefits and risks from applying soil carbon sequestration and “biochar” as negative emissions technologies. Biochar is charcoal produced from biomass (such as crop residues), which can be added to soil to boost fertility and carbon content or can be burned as a biofuel. The findings suggest that both techniques have useful negative emission potential and are likely to have lower impact in terms of cost and use of land, water and nutrients than many other technologies.