EGN NEWS DESK
With temperatures within the 30s as we head into September right here in Germany, it’s laborious to not fear concerning the unusual issues afoot with our local weather. My backyard is sort of a jungle. The water butts are brimming over from repeated heavy rainfall throughout highly effective thunderstorms intermittently interrupting the heatwaves. Humidity is excessive. There’s a tropical really feel. Mosquitos are thriving. New bugs and plant species from additional south have moved in. But the native grain harvest has suffered from the torrential downpours. It’s sizzling – and moist.
There have been instances once I would have regarded to my favorite icy Arctic area for some cool.
Alas.
My first ever go to to the Arctic, again in 2007 took me to the Svalbard archipelago, located between mainland Norway and the North Pole. Over half of its land space is roofed with ice, composing about six % of the planet’s glaciated space outdoors of Greenland and Antarctica. That’s the place I acquired hooked on the Arctic. Scientists on the Research Station at Ny Alesund on Spitsbergen, the primary island, informed me then that the Arctic was the “canary within the coalmine” for local weather change. Today, Svalbard is without doubt one of the fastest-warming locations on the planet.
Svalbard melting
This summer season, Svalbard’s ice caps underwent excessive episodes of melting, introduced on by exceptionally excessive air temperatures. NASA satellite tv for pc information reveals that in late July and early August 2024, temperatures hovered round 4 levels Celsius (7 levels Fahrenheit) above common for this a part of the Arctic Circle.
“The warmth took its toll on Svalbard, dwelling to a few of Earth’s northernmost glaciers, inflicting snow and ice to quickly soften”, writes NASA’s Emily Cassidy.
According to Xavier Fettweis, a climatologist on the Laboratory of Climatology and Topoclimatology on the University of Liège, Svalbard’s ice caps broke their all-time document for day by day floor soften on July 23, 2024. Svalbard shed about 55 millimeters of water equal that day, a price 5 instances larger than regular.
The distinctive melting continued into August, corresponding with a “persistent warmth dome that baked elements of Scandinavia’s Arctic”. The Barents Observer reported that the most well liked ever month-to-month temperature had been recorded in August at Svalbard Airport, near Longyearbyen. On August eleventh this yr the registered temperature there was 20.3°C two levels hotter than the earlier document.
“Record ice cap melting within the Svalbard Archipelago” was the title of the Copernicus “Image of the Day” for August 12.2024 Credit: European Union, Copernicus Sentinel imagery
This follows on Svalbard’s warmest summer season on document in 2023, in keeping with the Copernicus State of the Climate report, an annual report compiled by the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), on behalf of the European Commission. The report cited a number of contributing components for the heat, together with below-average sea ice cowl and above-average sea floor temperatures.
Widespread Arctic warming
The excessive melting noticed throughout these glaciers on Svalbard this summer season is a part of a longer-term development seen round the entire Arctic, which comprises 1 / 4 of the world’s glaciers. According to a research printed by Northern Arizona University on August 15, 2024, the snow line (the altitude at which snow accumulates every year and stays on the finish of the summer season), has risen by 150 meters over the previous 4 many years. Researchers checked out 269 glaciers throughout the Arctic, overlaying Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Scandinavia and Russia. Today’s excessive ranges of sustained warming have diminished the variety of days every year wherein snow falls, relatively than rain. Without a protecting snow cowl, glaciers each lose ice sooner in summer season, and fail to build up sufficient snow to develop or at the very least keep their ice every year. Measurements confirmed that snowlines had retreated Arctic-wide, and twice as quick on low-elevation glaciers in comparison with high-elevation ones. The research concluded that if emissions proceed at their present tempo, greater than 50 % of those Arctic glaciers will not have any snow accumulating on their floor by 2100, making it solely a query of time earlier than they disappear solely.
Sea ice fridge out of order
A research printed in Geophysical Research Letters on 17 July 2024 supplied worrying conclusions concerning the impacts of declining Arctic sea ice. It is usually known as the “Earth’s fridge,” as a result of it cools the planet by reflecting the solar’s rays. Scientists have been debating the extent to which the discount in its space over the previous couple of many years has impacted the ice’s cooling impact. Some fashions have indicated that cloud cowl would possibly improve as sea ice declines. This may doubtlessly offset the lack of sea ice, since clouds additionally replicate daylight again into area. However, the brand new research – utilizing high-performance computational strategies along with satellite tv for pc observations of complete reflectivity from the Eighties onwards – confirms that this cooling impact has decreased within the Arctic. It additionally concludes that the identical is true of rather more latest losses of Antarctic sea ice.
In the Arctic, cooling decreased by 17-22 % between the interval of 1980-88 versus 2016-2023. Cooling from Antarctic sea ice has additionally decreased measurably , by 9-14 %, although Antarctic sea ice extent solely started to say no round 2016 after many years of relative stability. The Arctic has warmed 3 to 4 instances sooner than the remainder of the planet, Antarctica round twice as quick. This decline in sea ice extent and reflectivity in each polar areas could also be contributing to this extra speedy polar warming in a suggestions a lot stronger than predicted by international local weather fashions.
Arctic in flames
The remaining ingredient I’ll point out on this record of extremely regarding local weather developments within the Arctic this summer season is the massive variety of intense wildfires in Canada, Russia and Alaska. It is the third time previously 5 years that prime depth fires have swept throughout the area, says the EU’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), which carefully tracks the hearth emissions, smoke transport and potential air high quality impacts.
Prof Guillermo Rein, Professor of Fire Science, Imperial College London, known as the fires a “rising monster of local weather change” in an interview with BBC.
“A decade in the past, Arctic wildfires have been thought-about uncommon occasions, infrequently studied. Now they’re occurring in all summer season classes and at rising burn scar,” he stated.
In addition to the destruction of boreal forest and tundra, lack of life and well being impacts via smoke air pollution, scientists are involved about suggestions results via which the fires will reinforce local weather warming. Smoke will cut back the capability of the Arctic ice to replicate photo voltaic radiation again into space- which might imply each land and sea take up extra warmth.
Reports printed in the middle of the summer season analysing final yr’s devastating forest fires in Canada targeted consideration on the massive quantities of carbon launched via the fires.
Canada’s “record-shattering” wildfires final yr produced almost as a lot greenhouse gasoline emissions in a single season as could be anticipated over a decade of fires in regular circumstances, the Guardian wrote on August 13, citing the lately printed State of Wildfires report. The fires, in Canada’s “wildest season ever”, have been made at the very least 3 times extra probably by the local weather disaster, the paper provides.
A NASA-funded research printed on Aug. 28 within the journal Nature discovered that the intense forest fires in 2023 “stoked by Canada’s warmest and driest situations in many years” launched about 640 million metric tons of carbon. “That’s comparable in magnitude to the annual fossil gasoline emissions of a giant industrialized nation”, NASA writes.
The analysis crew used satellite tv for pc observations and superior computing to quantify the carbon emissions of the fires from May to September 2023. They discovered that the Canadian fires launched extra carbon in 5 months than Russia or Japan emitted from fossil fuels in all of 2022 (about 480 million and 291 million metric tons, respectively). While the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted from each wildfires and fossil gasoline combustion trigger additional warming instantly, there is a crucial distinction, the scientists famous. In most circumstances, burned areas will finally reseed themselves, and new bushes will develop once more, which then re-absorb a number of the launched CO2 yr by yr. The CO2 emitted from the burning of fossil fuels, alternatively, is just not readily offset by any pure processes. But regrowth takes a very long time. The International Association of Fire and Rescue Services explains that in circumstances the place land erosion happens after a wildfire, no CO2 is reabsorbed there till reforestation initiatives are initiated.
The fireplace specialists add that the mixed impression on the greenhouse gasoline emission stability is bigger than simply the direct emissions. When bushes are killed by fires, and left to rot, they may proceed to decompose over the subsequent many years, releasing extra carbon dioxide into the environment. Also, dead bushes is not going to be absorbing any carbon dioxide from the environment like residing bushes would.
Azerbaijan and the Arctic
The subsequent annual spherical of UN local weather talks the place the world ought to – in idea – make progress in direction of the speedy greenhouse gasoline emissions reductions which can be key to defending our icy areas shall be held in November in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. Where? And how did that come about?
It’s an unlikely location. I’d add “unpromising”, however am attempting to maintain an open thoughts and provides COP29 an opportunity. I keep in mind listening to the announcement in Dubai final December, touring from final yr’s COP28 venue again to city in a metro practice packed stuffed with delegates and observers. The UNFCCC, the physique charged with negotiating worldwide local weather motion and organising the annual end-of-year talks, chooses the hosts on a rotating cycle. This time spherical, it was to be a rustic in Eastern Europe or the Caucasus. Against the background of the conflict in Ukraine, Russia was blocking efforts to have any EU or western-aligned nation as the subsequent host. It regarded like COP29 would default as soon as extra to my present dwelling city Bonn, the headquarters of the UNFCCC. Then got here the last-minute settlement on Azerbaijan, a small nation on the Caspian Sea between Russia and Iran, (largely within the headlines in reference to its battle with Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno Karabach). A lady reverse me, working for one of many nationwide negotiating groups, blurted out: Thank goodness. We can get to see some place aside from Bonn once more. And Azerbaijan is close to Russia, I’ve by no means been there”. Sigh. That comment weighed down on my sceptical facet, the place “convention tourism” is worried. Around me although, dismayed, resigned gasps of “not one other petrostate”. That is considered one of a number of key issues regarding this alternative of venue.
Climate progress in an oil-and gasoline autocracy?
“Oil-rich Azerbaijan has redefined itself over the previous 20 years from a struggling newly unbiased state to a serious regional power participant”, is the outline on the BBC’S nation profile website. The nation’s financial system is closely depending on fossil fuels. Oil and gasoline account for over 90 % of exports and one-third of GDP, in keeping with the World Bank. The nation is at present taking advantage of the surge in power costs pushed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Despite its wealth and elevated affect within the wider area, poverty and corruption proceed to overshadow the nation’s improvement”, the BBC profile goes on. That brings us to the subsequent downside. Azerbaijan is below theauthoritarian rule of President Ilham Aliyev, who has run the nation since taking up from his father, Heydar Aliyev, in 2003. The household has more and more tightened its grip on the nation because it grew to become unbiased after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The political opposition has been weakened by years of persecution, and civil liberties are severely constrained. Freedom of meeting is restricted. “Dissenting voices are virtually absent from mainstream media and demanding journalists threat arrest and imprisonment”, says the BBC profile.
COP in Baku – out of the blue
An additional downside is the last-minute nature of the choice to carry the convention in Baku. These mega-meetings want years, not months, of planning. And the nation has little expertise in international local weather politics. New York Times reporter Max Bearak visited the nation for an article printed early in August, which offers an insightful look behind the scenes. He interviewed Mukhtar Babayev, whom he describes as “an amiable midlevel bureaucrat put answerable for the talks”, and who “scarcely anticipated filling such a high-stakes function. “We should not well-known as a inexperienced transition concepts developer,” Babyev informed Bearak in what may very well be described as greater than a slight understatement. Babayev made his profession within the state-owned oil firm.
Like final yr’s host Dubai, Azerbaijan seeks to carry on to its income from oil and gasoline whereas having to at the very least pay lip service, at finest play an energetic function within the transformation to renewable power.
“It’s straightforward for Azerbaijan at present to remain a fossil-fuel-producing nation,” Mr. Babayev informed the New York Times. He stated different Azerbaijani officers, with a touch of fear, ask him, “‘Why do that you must contain this strain from all sides?”
Bearek additionally alludes to the “often-contradictory insurance policies” of climate-conscious Western nations. The time period “hypocritical” involves thoughts.
“Even as Europe in recent times barred its banks from financing fossil fuels, it wolfed up Azerbaijani gasoline and now hopes others will fund the growth of the pipelines”, he writes. Too true.
Similarly, the United States has known as on the world to maneuver extra rapidly to battle local weather change, even because it produces and exports extra oil and gasoline than ever, he provides.
Coming again to the local weather menace to the Arctic ice, it have to be stated that the Arctic states USA, Russia, Canada and Norway all have their fossil gasoline pursuits – and corresponding local weather warming contributions to account for.
Climate Impacts on Azerbaijan
Experts stress that Azerbaijan itself is topic to appreciable impacts from local weather change. The World Bank says temperatures are projected to rise at a sooner price than the worldwide common, doubtlessly by a staggering 4.7°C by the 2090s (in contrast with the 1986–2005 baseline) below the best emissions situation. This may cut back agricultural productiveness, exacerbate problems with desertification and soil salinity, and improve demand for irrigation, placing additional strain on the nation’s water provide. Poorer communities in rural areas are extra reliant on rain-fed agriculture, which is more likely to be negatively impacted by extra frequent droughts. A hotter local weather would additionally pose a number of threats to public well being in Azerbaijan, rising the speed of heat-related medical points in city areas corresponding to Baku, and lengthening the seasonal window throughout which malaria happens, the organisation concludes.
Against this background, the World Bank argues that whatever the tempo of worldwide mitigation efforts, decarbonization is in Azerbaijan’s financial self-interest and could be reasonably priced if supported by the suitable set of insurance policies. “Although the hydrocarbon-fueled progress mannequin has delivered substantial positive factors, Azerbaijan at present acknowledges each its constraints and the alternatives arising from the clear power transition”, the organisation says. Other benefits ought to be clear to anybody attending COP29 in Baku. Bearek within the New York instances units the scene: “Across a lake reeking of sulfur, creaking rigs excrete swimming pools of stagnant oil. Day and night time, a refinery subsequent door burns off methane, some of the potent greenhouse gases”.
Bearak writes that Mr. Aliyev’s authorities sees the long run in funding in renewable power at dwelling coupled with elevated gasoline exports:
“Much of the renewable power improvement will happen in territories Azerbaijan wrested from neighboring Armenia in a conflict that flared on and off for 30 years and got here to a sudden and bloody conclusion final September”. An necessary element?
Civil society issues
I’m involved with varied civil society teams involved with local weather change, who usually attend and observe the UN local weather talks. Azerbaijan is reportedly limiting entry, limiting the variety of entrance badges to civil society teams. Costs for illustration on website are reported to be even larger than in final yr’s host nation Dubai. This time, some teams are contemplating giving the assembly a miss. The human rights state of affairs makes activists and even journalists cautious.
At the interim UN talks in Bonn in June, the Climate Action International (CAN) publicised the challenges for activists and the media however pressured there may very well be no local weather justice with out the energetic participation of civil society.
Responding to the detention earlier this yr of outstanding human rights defender Anar Mammadli, who’s Head of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre and co-founder of the Climate of Justice Initiative in Azerbaijan, Amnesty International issued a press release:
“The Azerbaijani authorities should instantly stop their marketing campaign of intimidation in opposition to civil society, and cease cynically detaining their critics forward of the COP29 assembly in Baku in November. This has already led to the doubtful felony prosecution of a number of outstanding activists and journalists. The arrest of famend human rights defender Anar Mammadli is yet one more egregious instance of this disturbing development.”
The organisation lately printed a paper expressing its “issues on Azerbaijan’s human rights document and corresponding implications for Azerbaijan as a number nation which goals to make sure efficient discussions at COP29 and significant outcomes.”
The doc offers suggestions to the Azerbaijani authorities on steps they’ll take to “tackle the present issues and maintain COP29 in an surroundings that respects and upholds the human rights of everybody within the nation.” Here’s hoping the Baku regime takes word.
The rights to freedom of affiliation, expression and peaceable meeting in Azerbaijan are indispensable for any efficient local weather motion, Amnesty writes. The group calls on the federal government to “guarantee protected, efficient and significant participation of Azerbaijani and non-Azerbaijani civil society actors in COP29 with out worry of reprisals”
Baku: is it price it?
There are additionally those that really feel that this assembly shall be considerably of a waste of time, arguing that the hosts is not going to be ready to make actual progress – or is not going to be significantly eager to take action.
As I mentioned in my final Ice Blog publish, the main focus at COP29 in Baku shall be on finance. Countries are supposed to succeed in an settlement on a brand new, international climate-finance objective that can come into play after 2025. This is a key concern – and may very well be the one which in the end decides whether or not we take steps to restrict temperature rise to 1.5°C or not. But the bitter wrestle between developed and growing nations over who ought to present the trillions of {dollars} required to sort out local weather change throughout the worldwide south may effectively block progress on emissions reductions. To date, nations are nonetheless far aside within the negotiations.
The subsequent spherical of nationwide local weather motion plans, often known as nationally decided contributions (NDCs) are as a result of be submitted to the UN Climate Secretariat in early 2025 – AFTER the Baku assembly. There is a hazard that this might take away a way of urgency from the Azerbaijan talks.
So far, the NDCs put ahead have proven that present efforts and plans are inadequate to place the world on observe to attain the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement.
“The 2025 NDCs (NDCs 3.0) will decide to a big extent whether or not the world can get on an emissions trajectory that’s consistent with the temperature targets of the Paris Agreement and whether or not nations will be capable to construct up sufficient resilience to local weather change,” in keeping with the UNFCCC.
“This subsequent spherical of NDCs could also be a very powerful paperwork to be produced in a multilateral context up to now this century”, in keeping with UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell.
“As they add up, they may decide which route the world will take over the approaching many years. It could be a route the place financial progress is progressively cancelled out by the price of catastrophe administration, rebuilding, and loss and injury. Or it may be one the place we handle to set our economies and our societies on a sustainable, long-term pathway over the approaching 5-10 years,” says Stiell.
The 2025 targets are to current nationwide plans with a time horizon of 2035 and are to be submitted upfront of the UN Climate Change Conference COP30 that’s scheduled for November 2025. Brazil, a giant international participant, will host that assembly, and preparations are already effectively underway. That’s a very good factor. I’m all for ahead planning. But that doesn’t imply we are able to low cost this yr’s Baku COP.
We don’t have any time to waste. We can not afford to take a seat out a COP.
What the Arctic – and the world – wants is a speedy and substantial discount in emissions. We can’t win the local weather battle with out the petrostates. We can’t win it with out authoritarian states. We can not decide and select. We can not pause mitigation efforts as a result of the agenda focus is on finance.
We are all on this collectively. Let’s give Baku an opportunity. We don’t have any choice.
