The campaigning organisation, 350.org, has circulated an email asking for young people to help them in their latest campaign. The email reads as follows:
We’ve launched an exciting new programme to kickstart climate action, and we need your help to spread the word.
We’re recruiting young people (16-30 years old) from across the UK to take part in Green New Deal Rising: a new 6 month fully funded training programme, that will give participants the skills, knowledge and connections to get stuck into campaigning for a Green New Deal in their communities.
Can you help us recruit the next generation of leaders by sharing the programme with your networks? Please take a moment to share, or forward this email to someone who might be interested!
We’re recruiting for 30 people aged 16-30 to join the programme from towns and cities across the UK. You can apply to join Green New Deal Rising if you’re based in:
Bradford, Coventry, Cumbria, Dundee, Glasgow, Leicester, Middlesbrough, Newport, Port Talbot, Stoke, Sunderland or Swansea.
We aren’t interested in what job you have, whether you’ve been to university or how much campaigning experience you have. We want to find the people who understand the urgency and need for a Green New Deal because of how it could transform their lives and their community.
During Green New Deal Rising, you’ll take part in two intensive training weekends with some of the UK’s leading activists, have opportunities to plan and take action in your area, get funding for your campaigns, and get resources and support to get started leading the charge in your community. The deadline to apply is April 5th.
Please help spread the word, so we can reach potential future climate leaders across the UK:
The Green New Deal is a national plan to rapidly cut our emissions and fight climate change, create millions of secure and well-paid jobs, build better public services, and to tackle the rampant inequality we see in our country.
From: Climate Action Network by Tim Radford 18.3.21
The lengthening of the northern hemisphere summer has already begun, according to a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. The four seasons are normally defined as calendar events, pinned to the progress of a tilted planet in its annual orbit of the sun.
But Chinese scientists took a simpler approach. They defined summer’s commencement as the onset of temperatures in the hottest 25% of the year, winter by the coming of the coldest 25%.
And then they looked at the temperature data to work out what had already happened, and what is likely to happen as global average temperatures rise, in response to ever-higher greenhouse gas emissions linked to fossil fuel combustion and forest destruction.
They found that in 1952, summer could be counted as 78 days long; by 2011, this had stretched to 95 days in the northern hemisphere. Winter contracted from 76 to 73 days in duration. Spring had dwindled from 124 days to 115; autumn from 87 to 82 days.
Health risk
And if this trend continues, and humans go on burning fossil fuels under the notorious “business as usual” scenario, then by 2100 spring and autumn will go on diminishing, and winter will be over in just two months. Summer will however have been extended to nearly half the year.
“The changing seasonal clock,” the scientists write, “signifies disturbed agriculture seasons and rhythm of species activities, more frequent heat waves, storms and wildfires, amounting to increased risks to humanity.”
The abbreviation of winter may not however make the natural world more fecund or productive: many crops and a very large number of deciduous trees rely for health and strength on a reliable period of winter chill, and a shorter winter is inevitably going to be a warmer one.
Conversely a long hot summer is unlikely to be particularly welcome: these will arrive with more intense, more enduring and more extensive heat waves, to pose a threat to both harvests and to human health for perhaps a billion or more people.
“The changing seasonal clock signifies disturbed agriculture seasons, more frequent heat waves, storms and wildfires, amounting to increased risks to humanity”
Higher temperatures have been linked to high crime rates in some parts of the US and − the researchers warn − earlier and colder spring seasons can mean more “false springs” followed by severe frosts of the kind that, in 2012 in Michigan, cost fruit growers more than $500,000 in crop losses.
“As global warming intensifies, the four seasons of a year no longer have equal months, and their onsets are irregular,” the authors write. This change of seasonal lengths, they add. can trigger a chain of reactions, and “policy-making for agricultural management, health care, and disaster prevention requires adjustment.” − Climate News Network
Indian authorities have launched a search operation after part of a mountain glacier broke, sending a massive flood of water, mud and debris into areas below and damaging homes and a power plant.
A portion of Nanda Devi glacier broke off in the Tapovan area of the northern state of Uttarakhand, damaging the Rishiganga hydropower project, said police official Rishi Khemka.
At least 150 people were working at the plant and their fate is unknown, the Press Trust of India news agency reported, citing Ridhim Aggarwal, an official of the State Disaster Response Force.
Ravi Bejaria, a government spokesman, said some houses were also damaged in the flooding.
Officials said the glacier breaking sent water trapped behind it as well as mud and other debris surging down the mountain and into other bodies of water.
An advisory was issued urging people living on the banks of the Alaknanda River to move to safer places immediately.
Several teams of rescuers were rushed to the affected area, officials said.
In 2013, more than 1,000 people were killed in Uttarakhand after heavy rain triggered landslides and floods, washing away thousands of houses and roads and cutting communication links in many parts of the state.
Following up on this tragic event in India, an article by Benjamin Parkin, goes on to state how eight separate countries have been affected, causing a crisis in the HImalayas:
Crisis in the Himalayas: climate change and unsustainable development
Here are some of the facts from the first few paragraphs of the article:
A farmer was working in his fields in the village of Reni, close to Nanda Devi (one of the highest mountains in the Indian Himalayas, when he saw what looked like smoke and then heard a roar. He and other residents of the village scrambled to higher ground but not all of them made it safely. A rockslide had triggered a tsunami of water, rocks and mud through the river valley, gathering pace as it travelled down river. It destroyed a bridge and two hydropower plants and left a crater in the mountain side. 200 people are still missing.
Local people and scientists are saying that a crisis is unfolding in the Himalayas, brought about by a combination of climate change and aggressive road and dam building. The area is geologically unstable and the economies of several countries are threatened by this, from Afghanistan to Myanmar. Rivers like the Ganges, Indus and Brahmaputra sustain more than 1.5bn people and industries powering some of the world’s fastest economic growth. They also traverse the world’s most volatile geopolitical fault lines. Temperatures in the Himalayas have risen faster than in other mountain ranges.
Tim Radford, a founding editor of Climate News Network, worked for The Guardian for 32 years, for most of that time as science editor. He has been covering climate change since 1988.
The Gulf Stream is growing feebler, the Arctic seas are gaining fresh water. Together they could affect the world’s weather.
LONDON, 2 March, 2021 − The Atlantic Conveyer, otherwise the Gulf Stream − that great flow of surface water pouring northwards that overturns in the Arctic and heads south again at great depth − is now weaker than at any point in the last 1,000 years, European scientists report. And in a second, separate but related study, researchers have found that the Beaufort Sea, in the Arctic, has gained two-fifths more fresh water in the last 20 years: water that could flow into the Atlantic to affect the Conveyor, and with it, climatic conditions.
Scientists call it the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or just AMOC. Europeans know it as the Gulf Stream: the current that conveys tropic warmth to their coasts and keeps Britain and Western Europe at a temperature several degrees higher than latitude alone might dictate.
And for years, oceanographers and climate scientists have been observing a slowing of the flow, by as much as 15%. But direct measurement of the great current began only relatively recently in 2004: researchers needed to know whether the slowdown was part of a natural cycle, or a consequence of climate change driven by global heating.
Now they know a little more. European researchers report in Nature Geoscience that they looked for evidence of ocean circulation shifts in what they call “proxy evidence”: the story of climate change told by tree growth rings, ice cores, ocean sediments, corals and historical records, including naval logbooks.
The combined evidence of temperature patterns, the sizes of particles of ocean floor sediment and the salinity and density of sub-surface water helps build up a picture of the Atlantic current for the last 1,600 years.
“The Gulf Stream System moves nearly 20 million cubic meters of water per second, almost a hundred times the Amazon flow”
The verdict? Up to the 19th century, ocean currents were stable. The flow is now more sluggish than at any time in the last millennium.
This is roughly what climate models have predicted: the warm salty water moves north, cools, becomes more dense, sinks to the deep and flows back south. But the Arctic has begun to warm, Greenland to melt, and the flow of fresh water into the northern seas to intensify.
Since the flow is driven by the difference in temperatures, any change in the regional thermometer will play back into the rate of flow. And any extra arrival of fresh water could further slow the overturning circulation.
“The Gulf Stream system works like a giant conveyor belt, carrying warm surface water from the equator up north, and sending cold, low-salinity deep water back down south. It moves nearly 20 million cubic meters of water per second, almost a hundred times the Amazon flow,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, one of the authors.
“For the first time, we have combined a range of previous studies and found they provide a consistent picture of the AMOC evolution over the past 1600 years. The study results suggest that it has been relatively stable until the late 19th century.
“With the end of the Little Ice Age in about 1850, the ocean currents began to decline, with a second, more drastic decline following since the mid-20th century.”
Outcome awaited
The change could have ominous consequences for European weather systems: it could also deliver more intense coastal flooding to the US eastern seaboard. If the current continues to weaken, the consequences could be catastrophic.
Which is why a new study in Nature Communications matters so much. US researchers tracked the flow of fresh water from the Beaufort Sea − melt water from glaciers, rivers and disappearing Arctic sea ice − through the Canadian Archipelago and into the Labrador Sea.
Arctic water is fresher than Atlantic water, and richer in nutrients. But this extra volume, measured at a total of 23,300 cubic kilometres, could also affect the rate of flow of the overturning circulation. That is because relatively fresh water is less dense than saline water, and tends to float on top.
Quite what role it could play is uncertain: the message is that, sooner or later, it will escape into the North Atlantic. Then the world will find out.
“People have already spent a lot of time studying why the Beaufort Sea fresh water has gotten so high in the past few decades,” said Jiaxu Zhang, of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, first author. “But they rarely care where the freshwater goes, and we think that’s a much more important problem.” − Climate News Network
The results of a further study, published in Nature Climate Change has been reported in The Guardian. Entitled “Climate crisis: Scientists spot warning signs of Gulf Stream collapse” and Damian Carrington on 5th August 2021. Sections from the document are copied below:
“Climate scientists have detected warning signs of the collapse of the Gulf Stream, one of the planet’s main potential tipping points.
The research found “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” of the currents that researchers call the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC). The currents are already at their slowest point in at least 1,600 years, but the new analysis shows they may be nearing a shutdown.
Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level off eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.
The complexity of the AMOC system and uncertainty over levels of future global heating make it impossible to forecast the date of any collapse for now. It could be within a decade or two, or several centuries away. But the colossal impact it would have means it must never be allowed to happen, the scientists said.
“The signs of destabilisation being visible already is something that I wouldn’t have expected and that I find scary,” said Niklas Boers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, who did the research. “It’s something you just can’t [allow to] happen.”
It is not known what level of CO2 would trigger an AMOC collapse, he said. “So the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible. The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere”.
Scientists are increasingly concerned about tipping points – large, fast and irreversible changes to the climate. Boers and his colleagues reported in May that a significant part of the Greenland ice sheet is on the brink, threatening a big rise in global sea level. Others have shown recently that the Amazon rainforest is nowemitting more CO2 than it absorbs, and that the 2020 Siberian heatwave led to worrying releases of methane.
The world may already have crossed a series of tipping points, according to a 2019 analysis, resulting in “an existential threat to civilisation”. A major report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due on Monday, is expected to set out the worsening state of the climate crisis.
Boer’s research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, is titled “Observation-based early-warning signals for a collapse of the AMOC”. Ice-core and other data from the last 100,000 years show the AMOC has two states: a fast, strong one, as seen over recent millennia, and a slow, weak one. The data shows rising temperatures can make the AMOC switch abruptly between states over one to five decades.
The AMOC is driven by dense, salty seawater sinking into the Arctic ocean, but the melting of freshwater from Greenland’s ice sheet is slowing the process down earlier than climate models suggested.”
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