Tonkin & Taylor

MOVEMENT: Changes in ground elevation between 2003 and 2011.

The insurance industry is warning it could pull cover for parts of Christchurch if the findings of a sea level rise report are not seriously considered.

Large chunks of Christchurch’s eastern suburbs could be submerged by rising sea levels within the next 100 years, a report commissioned by the Christchurch City Council warns.

The full report can be read here.

Warming seas, the melting of Antarctic ice and the likelihood of increased tsunamis all raised the chances of some coastal communities going under water by 2115 and the council will need to start talking to residents in some areas about the level of “tolerable risk” both are prepared to take as ongoing climate change dictates more influence on those parts of the city.

Areas most likely to be affected were South New Brighton, Southshore, Sumner, Brooklands and parts of Linwood and the report said the city council will need to talk to residents in affected communities about when the “degree of risk” becomes unacceptable in certain areas.

Main roads to Akaroa could also be cut off if projected flooding hits.

Some of those areas are already in the Government-owned red zone.

Responding to the Tonkin & Taylor report this morning, the Insurance Council of New Zealand spokesman Samson Samasoni said the challenge would be to translate its recommendations into action.

“Without adaptation, there will be increased claims and higher losses leading to higher premiums or even insurance cover being withdrawn in some areas of Christchruch and throughout New Zealand”.

Every dollar spent in pre-disaster mitigation and adaptation measures would save many more dollars after the event, he said.

Samasoni said this sort of forward-thinking research was vital to improve Christchurch’s resilience to sea level rise and extreme weather from climate change.

COASTLINE TO CHANGE DRAMATICALLY

The Tonkin & Taylor report, which cost ratepayers $90,000, said future planning of housing and development in those areas should plan for at least a one-metre sea level rise meant the Christchurch coastline could look dramatically different this time next century.

At best, protection measures could minimise the impact rising sea levels could have but the report warned a “retreat” from some coastal areas may be needed over time.

The greatest impact of sea level rise on the city will be the raised risk of storm inundation and “the greater frequency of extreme tidal levels.”

The other major impact will be the “progressive shoreline retreat of low-lying areas,” the report warned.

Hundreds of hectares of land could be submerged and “shoreline retreats” ranging from 40m up to 200m-plus in some areas would be needed.

Detailed impacts along the coastline include:

– Christchurch dunes: A 1m sea level rise increases tsunami risk and the shoreline retreat would impact on the New Brighton Community Library and the North New Brighton Memorial and Community Centre and car-parking areas.

– Beaches south of estuary: More flooding for Sumner and Taylors Mistakes surf clubs needing a 40m-60m shoreline retreat and the flooding of 70 hectares of land.

– Avon-Heathcote estuary: More than 530 hectares of land flooded and shoreline retreats of 370m at Southshore and 560m at South New Brighton.

– Lower Avon and Heathcote Rivers: A combined 2400 hecrates of land flooded and more flooding predicted in lower reaches.

– Brooklands lagoon and Styx River: About 1640 hectares of land flooded and a shoreline retreat that would extend the Brooklands lagoon shoreline by 700 hectares due to “passive inundation.”

– Port Levy: Shoreline retreat of 200m impacting Fernlea Point Road and Wharf Road.

– Okains Bay: Shoreline retreat of 60m impacting Okains Bay Road.

– Akaroa: The loss of 13 hectares of land from flooding with shoreline retreats of 70m for the northern area and 170m for the southern area impacting Jubilee Park and Beach Road.

– Takamatua: The loss of seven hecrates of land under water and a 200m shoreline retreat impacting Takamatua Bay Road and Old French Road.

– Duvauchelle: Increased flooding with about 10.5 hectares of land expected to be flooded and a 100m shoreline retreat impacting State Highway 75, Onewa Flat Road, Seafield Road and the local school.

– Wainui: Increased flooding with about 3.4 hectares of land under water and a 10m shoreline retreat impacting Wainui Road.

The report said a key issue for the city will be to determine what degree of risk is acceptable for property and people already located in areas vulnerable to the impacts of natural hazards (tolerable risk).

Tolerable risk is defined as the level of risk individuals and communities are prepared to tolerate under certain circumstances in return for a specific benefit.

“The (council) needs to consider when the degree of risk becomes unacceptable, at what level of cost (economic, cultural, social and environmental) they are prepared to undertake protection responses.”

This would require “focused discussion” with affected people.

The report also recommended the council develop a city-wide sea level rise strategy which would create specific local plans “to increase the communities’ resilience to sea level rise.”

A spokesperson for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (Cera) said flood management areas were the responsibiity of local councils.

Christchurch City Council Flood Management Areas were identified in a City Plan change before the Canterbury earthquakes.

“CERA continues to work closely with all agencies involved in flood-prone areas to ensure the provided information on

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After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, scientists decided to help local officials plan for such scenarios by advancing recent research. Strong waves precede Sandy in Longport. (MICHAEL S. WIRTZ / Staff Photographer)

GALLERY: After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, scientists decided to help… (MICHAEL S.…)

The research “clearly indicates that New Jersey is one of the regions of highest concern in the United States, as far as risk from sea-level rise is concerned,” said Ben Strauss, an expert at the independent research organization Climate Central in Princeton. “This is really about how soon – not whether – sea level will rise that much.”

Strauss was not involved in the Rutgers research. However, pairing it with his own analysis, he noted that Atlantic City alone has $23 billion worth of real estate sitting below a five-foot flood level. That magnitude could have a two-in-three chance of being seen in any given year by midcentury, according to the scientists’ estimates.

The research was led by what Richard Lutz, director of Rutgers’ Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, called a “sea-level rise dream team.”

They include Kenneth Miller, a professor of earth and planetary sciences specializing in sea-level rise in past millennia, and Robert Kopp, a geomathematician who is assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences.

Then there’s Benjamin Horton, who has focused on more recent sea-level rise – the past 10,000 years or so – along the coast. Former director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Sea Level Research Laboratory, he switched to Rutgers this year, drawn by the opportunity to work at an institute specializing in marine and coastal “processes.”

Suddenly, “New Jersey has one of the biggest concentrations of sea-level rise experts in the world, I think,” Strauss said.

One factor that boosts sea-level rise along New Jersey: The land is sinking.

During the last glacial age, the huge ice mass that stopped just shy of North Jersey both compressed the land under it, and caused the ice-free land to the south to bulge up, like a mattress when someone sits on it.

That land is still subsiding, all these eons later.

Another reason New Jersey is sinking is that its coastal plain is geologically new – “a few tens of million years old,” said Kopp – and made of mud and sediment that’s still compressing. In comparison, New York and Philadelphia sit atop bedrock, and are more stable.

Plus, the more drinking water we pump out of it, the more it contracts.

Yet another reason for New Jersey’s increasing vulnerability: Researchers expect the melting ice sheets to slow the Gulf Stream and cause its waters to, in effect, pile up along the coast from Long Island to North Carolina.

So now, Horton said, researchers know what the “players” are along the coast. What they’re trying to do is reduce the uncertainties and better project what will happen.

One thing that wowed them was that sea level is rising faster than at any time in 4,300 years.

When those rates last occurred, the large remnant ice sheets from the last Ice Age were melting. “The rates were so fast that there weren’t any barrier islands in New Jersey, or anywhere else in the world,” Horton said. “There were hardly any coastal wetlands.”

Only after sea-level rise slowed did those barriers form, becoming nurseries for fish and habitat for birds and other wildlife.

People often think of sea-level rise as having major effects only far in the future. After Hurricane Sandy, however, the scientists felt compelled to advance recent research to help local officials plan.

To Miller, it was almost personal.

“Let’s take 2050,” he said. If his son buys a Shore house in the next 10 years, “he’ll have a mortgage in the year 2050.”

Even so, the insistent creep of sea level is not what will inundate the house. The real threat is the higher baseline that the rising sea will give to flooding in a storm. A five-foot flood today will actually be 6.5 feet by 2050, assuming a 11/2-foot rise in sea level.

“This illustrates the power of sea-level rise,” Horton said. “The debate about how intense hurricanes are going to be in the 21st century, or how many there are going to be, or what track they’re going to have, or what their diameter is going to be is still very much debated.

“But the one thing we do know is that sea level is going to rise. And it’s going to rise faster than in the 20th century.”

sbauers@phillynews.com

215-854-5147 @sbauers

Polar vortex

Polar vortex over Quebec and Maine on the morning of January 21, 1985

A polar vortex (also known as a polar cyclone, polar low, frigid twister, or a circumpolar whirl^[1] ) is a persistent, large-scale cyclone located near either of a planet’s geographical poles. On Earth, the polar vortices are located in the middle and upper troposphere and the stratosphere. They surround the polar highs and lie in the wake of the polar front. These cold-core low-pressure areas strengthen in the winter and weaken in the summer due to their reliance upon the temperature differential between the equator and the poles.^[2] They usually span less than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) in which the air is circulating in a counter-clockwise fashion (in the northern hemisphere). As with other cyclones, their rotation is caused by the Coriolis effect.

The Arctic vortex in the Northern Hemisphere has two centres, one near Baffin Island and the other over northeast Siberia.^[1] In the southern hemisphere, it tends to be located near the edge of the Ross ice shelf near 160 west longitude.^[3] When the polar vortex is strong, the Westerlies increase in strength. When the polar cyclone is weak, the general flow pattern across mid-latitudes buckles and significant cold outbreaks occur.^[4] Ozone depletion occurs within the polar vortex, particularly over the Southern Hemisphere, which reaches a maximum in the spring. The polar vortex phenomenon was described as early as 1853.^[5]

Identification

Polar cyclones are climatological features that hover near the poles year-round. Since polar vortices exist from the stratosphere downward into the mid-troposphere,^[1] a variety of heights/pressure levels within the atmosphere can be checked for its existence. Within the stratosphere, strategies such as the use of the 4 mb pressure surface, which correlates to the 1200K isentropic surface, located midway up the stratosphere, is used to create climatologies of the feature.^[6] Due to model data unreliability, other techniques use the 50 mb pressure surface to identify its stratospheric location.^[7] At the level of the tropopause, the extent of closed contours of potential temperature can be used to determine its strength. The horizontal scale of the vortex is frequently less than 1,000 kilometres (620 mi).^[8]

Duration and power

This section requires expansion. (June 2013)

Polar vortex and weather impacts due to stratospheric warming

Polar vortices are weaker during summer and strongest during winter. Individual vortices can persist for more than a month.^[8] Extratropical cyclones that occlude and migrate into higher latitudes create cold-core lows within the polar vortex.^[9] Volcanic eruptions in the tropics lead to a stronger polar vortex during the winter for as long as two years afterwards.^[10] The strength and position of the cyclone shapes the flow pattern across the hemisphere of its influence. An index which is used in the northern hemisphere to gauge its magnitude is the Arctic oscillation.^[11]

The Arctic vortex is elongated in shape, with two centres, one normally located over Baffin Island in Canada and the other over northeast Siberia. In rare events, when the general flow pattern is amplified (or meridional), the vortex can push farther south as a result of axis interruption, such as during the Winter 1985 Arctic outbreak.^[12] The Antarctic polar vortex is more pronounced and persistent than the Arctic one; this is because the distribution of land masses at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere gives rise to Rossby waves which contribute to the breakdown of the vortex, whereas in the southern hemisphere the vortex remains less disturbed. The breakdown of the polar vortex is an extreme event known as a sudden stratospheric warming, here the vortex completely breaks down and an associated warming of 30–50 °C (86–122 °F) over a few days can occur.

Sudden stratospheric warming events, when temperatures within the stratosphere warm dramatically over a short time, are associated with weaker polar vortices. These changes aloft force changes below in the troposphere. Strengthening storm systems within the troposphere can act to intensify the polar vortex by significantly cooling the poles. La Niña-related climate anomalies tend to favor significant strengthening of the polar vortex.^[13]

Climate change

Meanders of the northern hemisphere‘s jet stream developing (a, b) and finally detaching a “drop” of cold air (c); orange: warmer masses of air; pink: jet stream

Studies published since 2001 suggest a link between extreme weather and the polar vortex, in recent years more research identified interactions with Arctic sea ice decline, reduced snow cover, evapotranspiration patterns, NAO anomalies or weather anomalies which are linked to the polar vortex and jet stream configuration.^{[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]} However, because these are considered short-term observations (since ~13 years) there is considerable uncertainty in the conclusions. Climatology observations require several decades to distinguish natural variability from climate trends.

The general assumption is that reduced snow cover and sea ice reflect less sunlight and therefore evaporation and transpiration increases, which in turn alters the pressure and temperature gradient of the polar vortex, causing it to weaken or collapse. This becomes apparent when the jet stream amplitude increases (meanders) over the northern hemisphere, causing Rossby waves to propagate farther to the south or north, which in turn transports warmer air to the north pole and polar air into lower latitudes. The jet stream amplitude increases with a weaker polar vortex, hence increases the chance for weather systems to become blocked. A recent blocking event emerged when a high-pressure over Greenland steered Hurricane Sandy into the northern Mid-Atlantic states.^[22]

Ozone depletion

Southern Hemisphere Ozone Concentration, February 22, 2012

The chemistry of the Antarctic polar vortex has created severe ozone depletion. The nitric acid in polar stratospheric clouds reacts with chlorofluorocarbons to form chlorine, which catalyzes the photochemical destruction of ozone.^[23] Chlorine concentrations build up during the polar winter, and the consequent ozone destruction is greatest when the sunlight returns in spring.^[24] These clouds can only form at temperatures below about −80 °C (−112 °F). Since there is greater air exchange between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes, ozone depletion at the north pole is much less severe than at the south.^[25] Accordingly, the seasonal reduction of ozone levels over the Arctic is usually characterized as an “ozone dent,” whereas the more severe ozone depletion over the Antarctic is considered an “ozone hole.” This said, chemical ozone destruction in the 2011 Arctic polar vortex attained, for the first time, a level clearly identifiable as an Arctic “ozone hole”.^{[citation needed]}

Research

A study in 2001 found that stratospheric circulation can have anomalous effects on the weather regimes.^[14] A study published in 2004 found a mechanism to explain how the strength of the stratospheric polar vortex influences circulation in the troposphere. Researchers found a statistical correlation between weak polar vortex and outbreaks of severe cold in the Northern Hemisphere, the study was first reported in 2001.^[26][15] A 2007 study focused on the effects of polar cyclones on drought in Australia.^[27] In the past years more studies started to investigate a link between polar vortex and jet stream changes and extreme weather, after more pronounced anomalies have been observed. Many studies assess the connection of sea ice decline and responding interactions.^{[improper synthesis?][20][19][16][17][18][21]}

Outside earth

Hubble view of the colossal polar cloud on Mars

Other astronomical bodies are also known to have polar vortices, including Venus (double vortex—that is, two polar vortices at a pole),^[28] Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn’s moon Titan.

Hot polar vortex

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2014)

Saturn’s south pole is the only known hot polar vortex in the solar system. Infrared images have revealed that whereas temperatures on Saturn are normally −185 °C (−301.0 °F), temperatures on the vortex often reach as high as −122 °C (−188 °F), believed to be the warmest spot

Toyota Will Sell You a Hydrogen-Powered Car Next Year

 

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Toyota

After decades of big promises, false starts, and meager infrastructure, the first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle will go on sale in the United States next year. It’s coming from Toyota, which promises a range of 300 miles and a fill-up time of less than five minutes — once you’ve actually found a station that stocks the stuff.

The unnamed camo-clad engineering prototype that Toyota unveiled at CES looks remarkably similar to a Toyota Corolla. The automaker, which has spent the past year flogging the car in some of the hottest and coldest places on the continent, claims the emissions-free sedan will put out more than 100 kW (over 130 horsepower) and do zero to 60 in around 10 seconds.

“We aren’t trying to re-invent the wheel; just everything necessary to make them turn,” said Bob Carter, Toyota’s senior veep of U.S. auto operations. “For years, the use of hydrogen gas to power an electric vehicle has been seen by many smart people as a foolish quest. Yes, there are significant challenges. The first is building the vehicle at a reasonable price for many people. The second is doing what we can to help kick-start the construction of convenient hydrogen refueling infrastructure.”

Just how reasonable a price remains to be seen, because so far Toyota’s not saying what the car will cost, or even what it will be called. But the automaker says that, after a decade’s work, it has dramatically reduced the cost of building a fuel cell powertrain. Toyota estimates the cost of building a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle has fallen 95 percent since it built its first prototype in 2002, and according to Toyota spokeswoman Jana Hartline, Toyota will give consumers “a variety of options” when its hydrogen vehicle goes on sale. Given that the true cost of Honda’s FCX Clarity — which could only be leased, not bought — was estimated at well over $1 million, that’s a welcome reduction.

The technology’s other Achilles’ heel has long been the fueling infrastructure, or rather the lack of it. For that reason, Toyota will limit sales to California. Toyota has joined UC Irvine’s Advanced Power and Energy Program to map out where additional stations should be placed based on things like existing ownership of EVs and hybrids, population density and traffic patterns. Using that model, they say 68 stations in the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Orange County, and San Diego would be required at initial launch.

California currently has nine public hydrogen fueling stations, mostly around Los Angeles and San Francisco. Another 19 are under development, and the California Energy Commission has allocated $29.9 million for the next round of infrastructure development. All told, California has approved $200 million in funding to build hydrogen stations throughout the state in 2015. Another 20 stations are expected in 2016, with a total of 100 statewide by 2024.

A slow roll-out, to be sure, and something that Toyota plans to address on its own, with Carter saying, “Stay tuned, because this infrastructure thing is going to happen.”

arie University – mq.edu.au/PublicDiplomacy – Master of International Public Diplomacy. Study postgrad in 2014

2013 heat was off the charts Inbox x Tim Flannery – Climate Council via sendgrid.info 1:29 PM (1 hour ago) to me 2013 was officially Australia’s hottest year on record. We’ve spent the past few days getting the message out in the media about extreme heat and climate change. You can get all the details in our latest report Off The Charts. Please help us make sure as many people as possible make the connection between 2013’s record-breaking heat and climate change by sharing this eye-opening infographic with your friends. Thanks for your support