Climate Letter #916

Why Australia needs the strongest kind of limits on global warming.  The continent is especially vulnerable to any rise above 1.5C.  That is partly because of the risks involved for survival of the Great Barrier Reef and partly because Australia already has summers with heat that is close to the limits of human endurance.  Exposure to extreme drought events can also cause great distress in some areas.  (What would happen at 3 or 4C, which is where current trends are taking us, is not discussed.)

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The UK has a much different kind of problem with global warming—violent windstorms are expected to increase sharply.  “Even the minimum global warming now expected – just 1.5C – is projected to raise the cost of windstorm destruction by more than a third in parts of the country. If climate change heats the world even further, broken roofs and damaged buildings are likely to increase by over 50% across a swathe of the nation.”  Frequency of storms could decline but intensity is likely to worsen, with additions to flooding also expected.
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Rainfall extremes will vary from region to region.  While each degree of global temperature increase adds about 7% to total rainfall, due to higher rates of evaporation of waters that must eventually come back down, the addition on average can vary from 3% to as much as 15% depending on the location.  This is caused by changes in the strength of regional wind patterns, including updraft velocities, that are also affected by the warming.
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China is cleaning up its coal-fired power plants.  “By 2020 every Chinese coal plant will be more efficient than every US coal plant.”  While old plants have been shut down the newer ones are operating at much higher temperatures and pressures, which has many benefits.  Switching to natural gas is not an available option as it has been in the US.
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Humans may need to change some deeply embedded habits.  Professor William Rees provides a thought-provoking analysis about the evolutionary forces that shaped human nature and how this hinders us from properly facing the environmental changes that have so suddenly emerged.
Carl

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