Australia is losing millions of dollars in terms of economic productivity because of heat and climate change

Guneet Bhatia in the International Business Times: A recent study has revealed that the global heat and increase in temperature has led to a loss of almost US$6.2 billion or A$7.92 billion in terms of productivity of the workers during the financial year 2013-14. In addition, the scientists have warned that the loss could even become worse as Earth continues to further become warm.

A team of international researchers conducted the study on a group of working Australian, aged between 18 and 65. Out of the 1,726 respondents, nearly two-third admitted that the heat has made them less productive in the previous year, while seven percent confessed that they had been absent from work at least for one day during the period. According to the calculation performed by the researchers to study the economic impact of heat, the absenteeism from work and decline in performance or low productivity costs around US$655 per person.

"This represents an annual economic burden of around US$6.2 billion for the Australian workforce. This amounts to 0.33 to 0.47% of Australia's GDP," said the research team.

According to the authors, the study findings "suggest that adaptation measures to reduce heat effects should be adopted widely if severe economic impacts from labour productivity loss are to be avoided if heat waves become as frequent as predicted." The study was particularly conducted during the warmest and the third warmest years in the Australian history—2013 and 2014, respectively...

Cockatoo Island in Sydney, shot by Greg O'Beirne, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Study finds climate change may dramatically reduce wheat production

A press release from Kansas State University: A recent study involving Kansas State University researchers finds that in the coming decades at least one-quarter of the world's wheat traded will be lost to extreme weather from climate change if no adaptive measures are taken.

Vara Prasad, professor of crop ecophysiology and director of the USAID Feed the Future Sustainable Intensification Innovation Lab at Kansas State University, is part of a collaborative team that found wheat yields are projected to decrease by 6 percent for each degree Celsius the temperature rises if no measures to adapt to extreme weather fluctuations are taken.

Based on the 2012-2013 wheat harvest of 701 million tons worldwide, the resulting temperature increase would result in 42 million tons less produced wheat per degree of temperature increase. To put this in perspective, the amount is equal to a quarter of the global wheat trade, which reached 147 million tons in 2013. Changes in genetics and crop management can minimize some of these losses.

"It's pretty severe," Prasad said. "The projected effect of climate change on wheat is more than what has been forecast. That's challenging because the world will have to at least double our food supply in the next 30 years if we're going to feed 9.6 billion people."

Prasad is a co-author on the study, "Rising temperatures reduce global wheat production," published in a recent issue of the scientific journal Nature Climate Change.

..."Extreme temperature doesn't only mean heat; it also means cold," Prasad said. "Simply looking at the average temperature doesn't really show us anything because it's the extremities that are more detrimental to crops. Plants can handle gradual changes because they have time to adapt, but an extreme heat wave or cold snap can kill a plant because that adjustment period is often nonexistent."....

Wheat, shot by Scott Bontz (Dehaan), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

New study explains the role of oceans in global ‘warming hiatus’

A press release from the University of Southampton: New research shows that ocean heat uptake across three oceans is the likely cause of the ‘warming hiatus’ – the current decade-long slowdown in global surface warming.  Using data from a range of state-of-the-art ocean and atmosphere models, the research shows that the increased oceanic heat drawdown in the equatorial Pacific, North Atlantic and Southern Ocean basins has played a significant role in the hiatus.

The new analysis has been published in Geophysical Research Letters by Professor Sybren Drijfhout from the University of Southampton and collaborators from the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) Dr Adam Blaker, Professor Simon Josey, Dr George Nurser and Dr Bablu Sinha, together with Dr Magdalena Balmaseda from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF).

Professor Drijfhout said: “This study attributes the increased oceanic heat drawdown in the equatorial Pacific, North Atlantic and Southern Ocean to specific, different mechanisms in each region. This is important as current climate models have been unable to simulate the hiatus. Our study gives clues to where the heat is drawn down and by which processes. This can serve as a benchmark for climate models on how to improve their projections of future global mean temperature.”

Previously, the drawdown of heat by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean over the hiatus period, due to cool sea-surface temperatures associated with a succession of cool-surface La Nina episodes, was thought to be sufficient to explain the hiatus.  However, this new analysis reveals that the northern North Atlantic, the Southern Ocean and Equatorial Pacific Ocean are all important regions of ocean heat uptake. Each basin contributes a roughly equal amount to explaining the hiatus, but the mechanisms of heat drawdown are different and specific in each basin.

...Dr Sinha concluded: “The deeper understanding gained in this study of the processes and regions responsible for variations in oceanic heat drawdown and retention will improve the accuracy of future climate projections.”

Fish at an oil platform, Gulf of Mexico, photo by US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management

Antarctica: Heat comes from the deep

A press release from the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research-Kiel: The water temperatures on the West Antarctic shelf are rising. The reason for this is predominantly warm water from greater depths, which as a result of global change now increasingly reaches the shallow shelf. There it has the potential to accelerate the glacier melt from below and trigger the sliding of big glaciers. These data are published today by scientists of the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel together with colleagues from the UK, the US and Japan in the international journal Science.

... "There are many large glaciers in the area. The elevated temperatures have accelerated the melting and sliding of these glaciers in recent decades and there are no indications that this trend is changing,"says the lead author of the study, Dr. Sunke Schmidtko from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel.

For their study, he and his colleagues of the University of East Anglia, the California Institute of Technology and the University of Hokkaido (Japan) evaluated all oceanographic data from the waters around Antarctica from 1960 to 2014 that were available in public databases. These data show that five decades ago, the water masses in the West Antarctic shelf seas were already warmer than in other parts of Antarctica, for example, in the Weddell Sea. However, the temperature difference is not constant. Since 1960, the temperatures in the West Antarctic Amundsen Sea and the Bellingshausen Sea have been rising. "Based on the data we were able to see that this shelf process is induced from the open ocean," says Dr. Schmidtko.

..."These are the regions in which accelerated glacial melting has been observed for some time. We show that oceanographic changes over the past 50 years have probably caused this melting. If the water continues to warm, the increased penetration of warmer water masses onto the shelf will likely further accelerate this process, with an impact on the rate of global sea level rise " explains Professor Karen Heywood from the University of East Anglia.

The scientists also draw attention to the rising up of warm water masses in the southwestern Weddell Sea. Here very cold temperatures (less than minus 1.5°C or 29°F) prevail on the shelf and a large-scale melting of shelf ice has not been observed yet. If the shoaling of warm water masses continues, it is expected that there will be major environmental changes with dramatic consequences for the Filchner or Ronne Ice Shelf, too. For the first time glaciers outside the West Antarctic could experience enhanced melting from below....

A NASA/Cryosat image of ice on the Weddell Sea

Eastern China set for record-hot summers

Yahoo via AFP: By 2024, more than half of summers in eastern China will be as hot as in 2013, when the region was hit by a record-busting heatwave and devastating drought, a study said Sunday. Based on current global warming trends, the big heat will happen even if rising greenhouse gas emissions are braked over the next decade, it said.

The summer of 2013 was the hottest on record in eastern China -- a massive 1.1 degrees Celsius (two degrees Fahrenheit) above the long-term average. On 31 days, the temperature reached or exceeded the heatwave benchmark of 35 degrees Celsius -- more than double the usual June-August tally.

Nine provinces, with half a billion inhabitants, were affected. Direct economic losses, in China's most populated and economically developed region, have been put at 59 billion renminbi ($9.6 billion).

Reporting in the journal Nature Climate Change, scientists in Beijing, Canada and the United States said the probability of a 2013-like summer in eastern China had increased by a factor of 60 since the early 1950s....

Urban heat — not a myth, and worst where it’s wet

A press release from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies: A new Yale-led study quantifies for the first time the primary causes of the “urban heat island” (UHI) effect, a common phenomenon that makes the world’s urban areas significantly warmer than surrounding countryside and may increase health risks for city residents.

In an analysis of 65 cities across North America, researchers found that variation in how efficiently urban areas release heat back into the lower atmosphere — through the process of convection — is the dominant factor in the daytime UHI effect. This finding challenges a long-held belief that the phenomenon is driven principally by diminished evaporative cooling through the loss of vegetation.

The effects of impaired “convective efficiency” are particularly acute in wet climates, the researchers say. In cities such as Atlanta, Georgia, and Nashville, Tennessee, this factor alone contributes a 3-degree C rise in average daytime temperatures, according to the study, published July 10 in the journal Nature.

The phenomenon could have profound impacts on human health in cities worldwide as mean global temperatures continue to rise — and as more and more people move into cities — said Xuhui Lee, the Sara Shallenberger Brown Professor of Meteorology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and one of the study’s authors.

 “There is a synergistic relationship between climate conditions and the urban heat island,” Lee said. “This relationship suggests that the urban heat island will exacerbate heat wave stress on human health in wet climates where temperature effects are already compounded by high humidity. This is a huge concern from a public health perspective.”

...Their results reaffirmed the consensus view that, regardless of the local climate, the release of heat stored in human-built structures is the dominant contributor to the heat island phenomenon during the nighttime.

But during the daytime, convection is the dominant factor, researchers found — particularly in “wetter” cities of the southeastern U.S. In those places, the smooth surfaces of buildings and other human-made features are far less conducive to heat diffusion than the densely vegetated natural areas that surround them, researchers say. Overall, in wetter climates urbanization reduces convection efficiency by 58 percent....

A NASA image showing the temperature differential between Providence, Rhode Island, and surrounding areas

Air conditioning turns up city heat

Tim Radford in the Daily Climate: Researchers in the United States have identified how city-dwellers inadvertently stoke the heat of the night: By installing air conditioners. At night, heat from air conditioning systems now raises some urban temperatures by more than 1ºC.

Because the cities are getting hotter as the climate changes, residents are increasingly investing in air conditioning systems − which discharge heat from offices and apartment blocks into the city air. The vicious circle effect is that cities get still warmer, making air conditioning all the more attractive.

According to scientists at Arizona State University, the air conditioning feedback loop is now having a measurable effect. During the days, the systems emit waste heat, but because the days are hot anyway, the difference is negligible. At night, heat from air conditioning systems now raises some urban temperatures by more than 1 degree Celsius, they report in the Journal of Geophysical Research Atmospheres.

The team focused on the role of air conditioning systems in the Phoenix metropolitan area in Arizona's Sonora Desert, where summer conditions are harsh there anyway. But worldwide, normally warm countries are experiencing increasing extremes of heat, and conditions in cities have on occasion become lethal.

To cap this, cities are inevitably hotspots – and not just because of global warming. The concentration of traffic, pavement, lighting, central heating, industry, buildings and activity associated with millions of people can raise temperatures as much as 5°C above the surrounding countryside.

At present, 87 percent of U.S. households have air conditioning, and the United States – which is not one of the warmer nations – uses more electricity to keep cool than all other countries of the world combined. To keep Phoenix residents cool during periods of extreme heat, air conditioning systems can consume more than half of the region's total electricity needs, straining power grids....

Airconditioning units atop the Fairmont Hotel in Dallas, Texas, shot by Joe Mabel, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons license 3.0

Warming climate may spread drying to a third of earth

A press release from the Earth Institute at Columbia University: Increasing heat is expected to extend dry conditions to far more farmland and cities by the end of the century than changes in rainfall alone, says a new study. Much of the concern about future drought under global warming has focused on rainfall projections, but higher evaporation rates may also play an important role as warmer temperatures wring more moisture from the soil, even in some places where rainfall is forecasted to increase, say the researchers.

The study is one of the first to use the latest climate simulations to model the effects of both changing rainfall and evaporation rates on future drought. Published this month in the journal Climate Dynamics, the study estimates that 12 percent of land will be subject to drought by 2100 through rainfall changes alone; but the drying will spread to 30 percent of land if higher evaporation rates from the added energy and humidity in the atmosphere is considered. An increase in evaporative drying means that even regions expected to get more rain, including important wheat, corn and rice belts in the western United States and southeastern China, will be at risk of drought. The study excludes Antarctica.

“We know from basic physics that warmer temperatures will help to dry things out,” said the study’s lead author, Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist with joint appointments at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. “Even if precipitation changes in the future are uncertain, there are good reasons to be concerned about water resources.”

...Using two drought metric formulations, the study authors analyze projections of both rainfall and evaporative demand from the collection of climate model simulations completed for the IPCC’s 2013 climate report. Both metrics agree that increased evaporative drying will probably tip marginally wet regions at mid-latitudes like the U.S. Great Plains and a swath of southeastern China into aridity. If precipitation were the only consideration, these great agricultural centers would not be considered at risk of drought. The researchers also say that dry zones in Central America, the Amazon and southern Africa will grow larger. In Europe, the summer aridity of Greece, Turkey, Italy and Spain is expected to extend farther north into continental Europe....

A NOAA image of a dust storm

Is global warming hiding underwater?

A press release from the European Space Agency: Satellite observations of global sea-surface temperature show that a 30-year upward trend has slowed down within the last 15 years. Climate scientists say this is not the end of global warming, but the result of a rearrangement in the energy flow of the climate system and, in particular, how the ocean stores heat.

Like flying thermometers, some satellites carry instruments that provide a global view of the surface temperature of oceans and seas. Measuring the sea-surface temperature is important for improving weather and ocean forecasting and climate change research.

Satellite and local readings show that sea-surface temperature has been rising rapidly since the 1970s, in line with the overall warming of our planet. But this increase has significantly slowed in the last 15 years. In contrast, other variables such as increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide, rising sea levels and declining Arctic sea ice have not experienced the same reduction in trend and therefore demonstrate that Earth’s climate continues to change.

Scientists have speculated that one of the causes of this ‘plateau’ in sea-surface temperature could be a change in the exchange of ocean water between warm, surface waters and cold, deep waters below 700 m – as if the warming is ‘hiding’ underwater. Temperature measurements at this depth cover a relatively short period.

But the warm water won’t hide below the surface forever: scientists believe that it may re-emerge later or affect other climate indicators, such as sea level or ocean circulation....

Sea surface temperature, timeline from the ESA website

Greek economic crisis leads to air pollution crisis

Space Daily via SPX: In the midst of a winter cold snap, a study from researchers in the United States and Greece reveals an overlooked side effect of economic crisis - dangerous air quality caused by burning cheaper fuel for warmth.

The researchers, led by Constantinos Sioutas of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, show that the concentration of fine air particles in one of Greece's economically hardest hit areas has risen 30 percent since the financial crisis began, leading to potential long-term health effects.

These fine particles - measuring less than 2.5 microns in diameter (approximately 1/30th the diameter of a human hair) - are especially dangerous because they can lodge deep into the tissue of lungs, according to the EPA.

"People need to stay warm, but face decreasing employment and rising fuel costs," explained Sioutas, senior author of the study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology and Fred Champion Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at the USC Viterbi School. "The problem is economic hardship has compelled residents to burn low quality fuel, such as wood and waste materials, that pollutes the air."...

A smoggy view from the Acropolis, photo by Karol M, retouched by Hekerui, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Warming of deep oceans said holding climate change steady

Space Daily: Heat absorbed by the deep oceans has brought a slowing of global warming in the last five years, U.K. scientists say, but the long-term trend is still upward.

Oceans absorb large amounts of the Earth's heat, a phenomenon that goes on over long periods as heat from the ocean surface is gradually circulated to the seas' deeper regions, they said.

Global temperatures have remained largely static over the past five years, giving ammunition to climate change skeptics, but scientists said the evidence still clearly points to ongoing global warming in the coming decades as greenhouse gases in the atmosphere build up, The Guardian reported Monday....

The North Pacific ocean floor, image by the US Geological Survey, and therefore in the public domain