Sandy blows climate change back onto agenda
Posted: 06/11/2012 Filed under: Climate change, Jeff Mazo | Tags: climate change, Hurricane Sandy Leave a comment »
Hurricane Sandy makes landfall in the US. Photo copyright EUMETEOSAT 2012
By Dr Jeffrey Mazo, Managing Editor, Survival; Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy
Stuck in my hotel in Washington DC channel-zapping for hours during Hurricane Sandy last week, I was surprised not to hear one mention of global warming in connection with the storm, despite the almost non-stop coverage that pushed even the close-fought presidential election out of the headlines.
Admittedly, this was a limited and idiosyncratic sample of the coverage, and people began blogging and writing about Sandy and global warming quickly enough. And I was in DC for a series of meetings and lectures at IISS-US and SAIS on the consequences of catastrophic climate change. At my (rescheduled) events the question of whether Sandy was a manifestation of climate change came up again and again.
As ice disappears, commercial opportunities come into view
Posted: 25/09/2012 Filed under: Arctic Climate Change and Security, Energy Security, Jens Wardenaer | Tags: Arctic, climate change, extreme weather, global warming, ice caps, oil drilling, oil exploration, shipping Leave a comment »
Arctic Sea Ice. Photo Credit: NASA/GSFC
By Jens Wardenaer, Research Analyst and Editorial Assistant
The annual summer minimum for Arctic sea ice has been declining faster than expected, with this year marking a record low.
On 16 September, Arctic sea ice reached its lowest extent since satellite records began in 1979, according to preliminary figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre. At 3.41 million square metres, this year’s melt beat the previous 2007 record by 760,000 square kilometres. But while the decline of sea-ice extent is the most visible metric of climate change in the Arctic, another trend is even more worrying. For the third straight summer the total volume of ice set a new record low, and is now only 20% of the 2000 level.
It is too early to say whether this will be an annual phenomenon, but the speed of the melt has already exceeded prognoses. The record for minimum ice extent was already reached on 26 August, nearly one month earlier than the 2007 record. According to scientists, the rate of decline is faster than any models have been able to capture. Most experts previously thought it possible that the Arctic would be ice-free in the summer by 2050; now more and more scientists believe that may occur as soon as 2030, or even before 2020. Read the rest of this entry »
Greenland: rare earth in the Arctic
Posted: 02/03/2012 Filed under: Arctic Climate Change and Security, Sarah Johnstone | Tags: Arctic, China, climate change, Greenland, mining, oil, rare-earth elements, resources 1 Comment »
By Sarah Johnstone, Assistant editor, online
A weak Greenland could offer major powers like China and the United States a back door into the Arctic region, Dr Damien Degeorges said during a recent talk at the IISS. Rich in resources, covering a vast area but sparsely populated, the autonomous Danish territory would need to ensure its long-term economic viability as it moved towards full independence. It also needed to raise educational levels and make arrangements for its future defence.
Half the size of Europe, Greenland had enough of the rare-earth elements vital to many high-tech devices to supply an estimated 25% of global requirements for 50 years, Degeorges said. The island was becoming ‘a hypermarket of natural resources’ as a warming climate melted the ice sheet and made mining easier.
