Friday 19 August 2016

Reshare of Carbon Briefing's weekly update - grim reading with some excellent links



19th August 2016
This week

Record-breaking
As competition heats up in the final few days of the Rio Olympics, a record of a different type fell this week as NASA scientists confirmed July 2016 had been the hottest month in recorded history.
The latest data show July topped the chart with temperatures 0.84C warmer than the 1950-1980 global average. With the last vestiges of a strong El NiƱo now long gone, July 2016 beat the previous record set jointly in 2011 and 2015 by a full 0.18C.
Back in Rio's Olympic parks, pools, courts, arenas and stadiums, temperatures several degrees above normal for this time of year made for some uncomfortable conditions on the ground. The searing heat came as research warned rising temperatures could mean that by 2085, only eight northern hemisphere cities outside of Western Europe will be fit for hosting the Summer Games.
Pushing limits
As the Olympic medal table swells, there's one record that many are keen for the world not to break: global temperature rising 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
With the world already past the 1C mark, avoiding the 1.5C limit altogether looks increasingly unlikely, some scientists are warning. Staying close to 1.5C in the long run now depends on the extent to which various “negative emissions” technologies can be used to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.
The question of how this could be done got a fair bit of attention this week, as scientists gathered in Geneva to flesh out the details of a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on limiting warming to 1.5C, a goal set out in the Paris Agreement last December.
In a perhaps uncharacteristically strongly worded opening gambit from the IPCC chair, Dr Hoesung Leetold the scientist authors that they bore a "great responsibility" in making sure the report clearly spelled out the practical steps needed to meet the 1.5C goal. Carbon Brief looked at how "feasibility" looks set to feature as a priority for the coming report, with Lee telling the conference:
“One notion that runs through all this, is feasibility. How feasible is it to limit warming to 1.5C? How feasible is it to develop the technologies that will get us there?…We must analyse policy measures in terms of feasibility."
The consequences of rising temperatures came into sharp focus this week, as scientists warned that climate change is likely to bring more of the sort of extreme rainfall which has put large parts of Louisiana underwater. The disaster, now the worst to hit the US since Superstorm Sandy in 2012, has displaced thousands of people and, so far, notched up an estimated $30m in damages.