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July 17, 2014
State of the Climate report cover. (Click for a high resolution image. Credit: NOAA)
In 2013, the vast majority of worldwide climate indicators—greenhouse gases, sea levels, global temperatures, etc.—continued to reflect trends of a warmer planet, according to the indicators assessed in the State of the Climate in 2013 report, released online today by the American Meteorological Society.
Scientists from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., served as the lead editors of the report, which was compiled by 425 scientists from 57 countries around the world (highlights, visuals, full report). It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on air, land, sea, and ice.
“These findings reinforce what scientists for decades have observed: that our planet is becoming a warmer place,” said NOAA Administrator Kathryn Sullivan, Ph.D. “This report provides the foundational information we need to develop tools and services for communities, business, and nations to prepare for, and build resilience to, the impacts of climate change.”
The report uses dozens of climate indicators to track patterns, changes, and trends of the global climate system, including greenhouse gases; temperatures throughout the atmosphere, ocean, and land; cloud cover; sea level; ocean salinity; sea ice extent; and snow cover. These indicators often reflect many thousands of measurements from multiple independent datasets. The report also details cases of unusual and extreme regional events, such as Super Typhoon Haiyan, which devastated portions of Southeast Asia in November 2013.
Highlights:
State of the Climate in 2013 is the 24th edition in a peer-reviewed series published annually as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The journal makes the full report openly available online.
“State of the Climate is vital to documenting the world’s climate,” said Dr. Keith Seitter, AMS Executive Director. “AMS members in all parts of the world contribute to this NOAA-led effort to give the public a detailed scientific snapshot of what’s happening in our world and builds on prior reports we’ve published.”
NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. Join us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and our other social media channels.
Coal remained the second largest primary fuel by consumption in Australia in the period July 2012 – June 2013 (FY2012/13), according to new official figures from the Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics (BREE).
Reporting on that period in the latest Australian Energy Update, BREE’s figures show hard coal and lignite accounted for 33% of total energy consumption, behind oil (including crude oil, liquefied petroleum gas and refined products).
But despite coal’s strong showing, it’s share fell in the mix to its lowest level since the early 1970s. Overall, coal consumption fell in FY2012/13 by 6% on the back of lower coal use in the electricity and iron and steel sectors.
“This reflects not only a decline in output in both of these sectors, but also a shift away from the use of coal in electricity generation in recent years,” the report concluded.
In contrast, renewables showed annual growth of 11.5% – with hydro generation up by almost 30% on the previous year, reflecting increased water flow in southeast Australia, as well as improved relative costs of hydro generation under the carbon price. Solar PV and wind energy also grew strongly – up 49.2 and 19.9% respectively.
Consumption of natural gas was also up on the back of its greater use in the electricity and industrial sectors. It accounted for 24% of consumption, up 2.2% on the previous year.
Written by Jonathan Rowland
Published on 18/07/2014
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Save our planet now or it will be too late. It is simple. One Planet
The United States ranked near the bottom on energy efficiency, placing 13th out of 16 countries in a new report by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). Credit: Stefano Paltera/U.S. Deptartment of Energy Solar Decathlon96Share152
Germany leads the world in harnessing the benefits of energy efficiency, followed by Italy, the European Union, China and France, according to a new ranking of the world’s 16 largest economies. The United States was near the bottom, placing 13th.
America’s poor showing is sobering for a nation accustomed to being a world leader, and it could have economic consequences. “How can the United States compete in a global economy if it continues to waste money and energy that other countries save and can reinvest?” said Rachel Young, the principal author of the energy efficiency report card.
Even more sobering is the news that many of the countries are stalled or regressing on energy efficiency, and all them could save significantly more energy by embracing the full range of proven technologies and policies, according to the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), which produced the International Energy Efficiency Scorecard released on Thursday.
“There are substantial opportunities for every country to improve,” said Young. The average score of all the ranked economies was just 50 points out of a possible 100—an indication, she said, that “overall, countries are failing to adopt best practices, and if they improve, they do so in small increments.”
Energy efficiency must provide more than half of the world’s carbon emissions reductions to avoid a catastrophic temperature increase, according to the International Energy Agency.
Click to enlarge
Energy efficiency refers to a wide range of measures that allow people, businesses and governments to use less energy but get the same services. The measures include mandating better fuel economy for vehicles, reducing wasted energy at power plants and on transmission lines, and designing buildings and homes so they require less heating and cooling, among other things.
The ACEEE’s 2014 scorecard ranked 15 countries and the European Union, which together represent 81 percent of worldwide economic output and 71 percent of global energy consumption. Each economy was rated based on 31 criteria in four categories: national efforts/policies, buildings, industrial and transportation.
Germany’s top score in the ACEEE report stems from the country’s emphasis on energy efficiency as a big part of its “Energiewende,” the nation’s ambitious energy shift from fossil fuels and nuclear power to renewable energy and lower energy consumption.
“We see this as a validation that Germany’s measures are bearing fruit in its ongoing efforts to transition towards a low-carbon and energy-efficient economy,” Dr. Philipp Ackermann, deputy chief of mission at the German embassy in Washington, said in a statement.
“The cheapest energy is the energy you don’t have to produce in the first place,” he added during a conference call with reporters. “Our economy is growing—and with a satisfactory growth rate—but without using more energy.”
Still, Germany got just 65 points in the ACEEE scorecard—so it’s only two-thirds of the way to a perfect score.
The United States, meanwhile, was far behind Germany. It captured a mere 42 points and outperformed only three countries—Russia, Brazil and Mexico. The ACEEE said the U.S. performance was unimproved from 2012, when the group last ranked international energy efficiency efforts. In that report, the nation ranked ninth out of 12.
U.S. Congressman Peter Welch (D-Vermont), a proponent of energy efficiency, said “There’s really no excuse for the U.S. lagging behind other nations on energy efficiency.” Energy-saving policies in his home state—including an energy efficiency utility called Efficiency Vermont –have demonstrated that the effort “saves money, reduces environmental impact and creates jobs.”
Rep. Welch introduced energy efficiency legislation that passed in the house this year with bipartisan support. In the senate, though, a companion bill got stalled when lawmakers sought to tack on controversial measures such as approval of the long-delayed Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline.
Welch believes the bill got caught up in election year politics, and pledged to try again. “This is an extraordinarily important issue that has enormous upside potential for our economy and for our environment,” he said.
The ACEEE and Welch are also hopeful that U.S. energy efficiency will get a boost from the recently proposed federal air pollution rules requiring states to meet targets for reducing carbon emissions from power generation. The draft rules were released by the Environmental Protection Agency last month.
“I think energy efficiency will get a lot more attention if EPA finalizes its power plant rule along the lines of what they proposed,” said Steven Nadel, ACEEE’s executive director. “Energy efficiency is the low-cost compliance path for all the states. Efficiency can often do the majority of what each state will need to do to meet its targets.”
Other steps could also help, including pending fuel economy standards for light-duty and higher standards for heavy-duty vehicles.
The ACEEE report included these other notable findings:
A new study has found that turbulent mixing in the deep waters of the Southern Ocean, which has a profound effect on global ocean circulation and climate, varies with the strength of surface eddies – the ocean equivalent of storms in the atmosphere – and possibly also wind speeds.
It is the first study to link eddies at the surface to deep mixing on timescales of months to decades.
This new insight into how the Southern Ocean behaves will allow scientists to build computer models that can better predict how our climate is going to change in the future.
The findings are published in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience.
The Southern Ocean plays a pivotal role in the global overturning circulation, a system of surface and deep currents linking all oceans and one of the fundamental determinants of the planet’s climate. The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is the only location where the ocean can circulate freely all the way around the globe without continental barriers.
Because the ocean is made up of many layers of water that are dependent on temperature and salinity, water moves easily along horizontal or ‘isopycnal’ layers, but mixes only slowly across the layers, known as ‘diapycnal’ mixing. This combination of diapycnal and isopycnal mixing drives the upwelling of deep waters up to the surface, forming an ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ overturning cell. When deep waters rise to the surface, they bring with them the nutrients that plankton need to grow. Conversely, as surface waters sink they take heat and dissolved CO2 from the atmosphere, strongly shaping regional and global climate change.
This image shows sensors from the DIMES project being used in the Drake Passage.
(Photo Credit: Katy Sheen)
The researchers took measurements of small-scale temperature and velocity fluctuations, to measure the diapycnal movements in the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) across the Drake Passage region of the Southern Ocean.
The data revealed that, during the period of their measurements, turbulence in deep waters significantly correlated with surface eddy activity. The mechanism that causes eddies in the surface ocean leads to an intensification of currents in the top and bottom layers of the ocean. When such instability arises, strengthened bottom currents interact with rough bottom topography to generate internal waves that eventually devolve into turbulence. This process provides a source of energy for the mixing of abyssal waters, which, in turn, hastens the global overturning circulation.
The researchers established that deep water eddies are likely energised by strong westerly winds over the Southern Ocean that force the ACC and that abyssal mixing, on time scales of months to decades, reacts to this changing atmospheric climate.
Study co-author Katy Sheen, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow from Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton, says: “These findings will help us to understand the processes that drive the ocean circulation and mixing so that we can better predict how our Earth system will respond to the increased levels of carbon dioxide that we have released into the atmosphere.”
The researchers used data from the ‘Diapycnal and Isopycnal Mixing Experiment in the Southern Ocean’ (DIMES) project, a UK/US field program aimed at measuring diapycnal and isopycnal mixing in the Southern Ocean. DIMES released a chemical dye tracer into the ACC about a mile below the sea surface. Over five years, the horizontal and vertical spread of the tracer was mapped out by measuring its concentration in hundreds of seawater samples, to identify how quickly the Southern Ocean moved water particles around. It also used a mooring cluster of sensors in the Drake Passage to provide detailed time series information on the processes responsible for the mixing of the tracer.
This is a wave in the Southern Ocean.
(Photo Credit: Katy Sheen)
