Earth’s deep oceans may absorb enough heat at times to flatten the rate of global warming for periods of as long as a decade–even in the midst of longer-term warming. This according to a [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 20 Sep 2011

Earth’s deep oceans may absorb enough heat at times to flatten the rate of global warming for periods of as long as a decade–even in the midst of longer-term warming. This according to a new analysis led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Excess energy entering the climate system due to greenhouse gas increases may not be immediately realized as warmer surface temperatures, as it can go into the deep ocean instead

The study, based on computer simulations of global climate, points to ocean layers deeper than 1,000 feet as the main location of the “missing heat” during periods such as the past decade when global air temperatures showed little trend.

The findings also suggest that several more intervals like this can be expected over the next century, even as the trend toward overall warming continues.

“We will see global warming go through hiatus periods in the future,” says NCAR’s Gerald Meehl, lead author of the study.

“However, these periods would likely last only about a decade or so, and warming would then resume. This study illustrates one reason why global temperatures do not simply rise in a straight line.”

The research, by scientists at NCAR and the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia, was published online Sunday in Nature Climate Change.

Funding for the study came from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR’s sponsor.

“The research shows that the natural variability of the climate system can produce periods of a decade or more in which Earth’s temperature does not rise, despite an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations,” says Eric DeWeaver, program director in NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences.

“These scientists make a compelling case that the excess energy entering the climate system due to greenhouse gas increases may not be immediately realized as warmer surface temperatures, as it can go into the deep ocean instead.”

The 2000s were Earth’s warmest decade in more than a century of weather records.

However, the single-year mark for warmest global temperature, which had been set in 1998, remained unmatched until 2010.

Yet emissions of greenhouse gases continued to climb during this period, and satellite measurements showed that the discrepancy between incoming sunshine and outgoing radiation from Earth actually increased.

This implied that heat was building up somewhere on Earth, according to a 2010 study by NCAR researchers Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo.

The two scientists, who are both co-authors on the new study, suggested that the oceans might be storing some of the heat that would otherwise go toward other processes, such as warming the atmosphere or land, or melting more ice and snow.

Observations from a global network of buoys showed some warming in the upper ocean, but not enough to account for the global build-up of heat.

Although scientists suspected the deep oceans were playing a role, few measurements were available to confirm that hypothesis.

To track where the heat was going, Meehl and colleagues used a powerful software tool known as the Community Climate System Model, which was developed by scientists at NCAR and the Department of Energy with colleagues at other organizations.

Using the model’s ability to portray complex interactions between the atmosphere, land, oceans and sea ice, they performed five simulations of global temperatures.

The simulations, which were based on projections of future greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, indicated that temperatures would rise by several degrees during this century.

But each simulation also showed periods in which temperatures would stabilize for about a decade before climbing again.

For example, one simulation showed the global average rising by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius) between 2000 and 2100, but with two decade-long hiatus periods during the century.

During these hiatus periods, simulations showed that extra energy entered the oceans, with deeper layers absorbing a disproportionate amount of heat due to changes in oceanic circulation.

The vast area of ocean below about 1,000 feet (300 meters) warmed by 18 percent to 19 percent more during hiatus periods than at other times.

In contrast, the shallower global ocean above 1,000 feet warmed by 60 percent less than during non-hiatus periods in the simulation.

“This study suggests the missing energy has indeed been buried in the ocean,” Trenberth says. “The heat has not disappeared and so it cannot be ignored. It must have consequences.”

The simulations also indicated that the oceanic warming during hiatus periods has a regional signature.

During a hiatus, average sea-surface temperatures decrease across the tropical Pacific, while they tend to increase at higher latitudes, especially in the Atlantic, where surface waters converge to push heat into deeper oceanic layers.

These patterns are similar to those observed during a La Niña event, according to Meehl.

He adds that El Niño and La Niña events can be overlaid on top of a hiatus-related pattern.

Global temperatures tend to drop slightly during La Niña, as cooler waters reach the surface of the tropical Pacific, and they rise slightly during El Niño, when those waters are warmer.

“The main hiatus in observed warming has corresponded with La Niña conditions, which is consistent with the simulations,” Trenberth says.

The simulations were part of NCAR’s contribution to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5.

They were run on supercomputers at NCAR’s NSF-supported Climate Simulation Laboratory and on supercomputers at Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, both supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Source: NSF

South Africa will beef up its climate policy to ensure that all government departments responded well to the issue of climate change.

While details were still sketchy on how this would be done, Water [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 14 Sep 2011

South Africa will beef up its climate policy to ensure that all government departments responded well to the issue of climate change.

While details were still sketchy on how this would be done, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa on Tuesday said it was important that departments had a “common” strategy on how to help South Africa respond to global warming, which threatened development in poor countries.

“It is very important that as we host the Climate Change Conference in Durban, that we as a country start to demonstrate that we are serious about climate change and willing to take the issue forward in terms of policy,” Molewa said at a media briefing on Tuesday.

She confirmed that up to 194 participants from different countries will form part of the climate talks scheduled to take place from 28 November – 9 December.

Molewa said South Africa will also be using its position as a host to push for the implementation of several crucial political decisions that were taken at the Cancun round of talks last year. These included finance packages for poor countries and the extension or renewal of the Kyoto Protocol that binds nations to measurable carbon emissions reduction.

A new climate green fund — which Minister in The Presidency: National Planning Commission, Trevor Manuel, co-chairs — was agreed upon at Cancun to transfer money from the developed to developing countries to tackle the impacts of global warming, but no figure was put on how much money will go into it.

“We believe that Durban should be the place where we do something about all those decisions …on what to do with Kyoto and issues of adaptation, technology transfer and mitigation,” Molewa said.

The South African government, meanwhile, will be hosting a series of events during the build-up to the conference to get its people involved and educated about climate change. Campaigns will include educational road shows and community meetings in all the nine provinces in the coming weeks.

Officials had been holding talks with African ministers in order to present a united front at the international meeting.

Source: BuaNews

Plants and animals are responding up to three times faster to climate change than previously estimated, as wildlife shifts to cooler altitudes and latitudes, researchers said on Thursday.

In Borneo, moths shifted 220 [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 22 Aug 2011

Plants and animals are responding up to three times faster to climate change than previously estimated, as wildlife shifts to cooler altitudes and latitudes, researchers said on Thursday.

In Borneo, moths shifted 220 feet upward on Mount Kinabalu

Scientists have reported this decade on individual species that moved toward the poles or uphill as their traditional habitats shifted due to global warming, but this study analyzed data on over 2,000 species to get a more comprehensive picture.

In this analysis, researchers found that on average, wildlife moved to higher elevations at the rate of about 40 feet per decade.

They are moving toward the poles at an average rate of 10.31 miles a decade, scientists reported in the journal Science.

The altitude shift is twice what scientists had estimated as recently as 2003, according to Chris Thomas, a professor of conservation biology at the University of York in Britain, and the leader of the project.

The average latitude shift is triple earlier estimates, Thomas said in a telephone interview. But he noted that not all species move toward the poles as quickly as that, some don’t move much at all and others actually move slightly toward the Equator, depending on what they need most to survive.

What became clear in this study, Thomas and the other authors said, was that species moved furthest in places where the climate warmed most, an unambiguous link to climate change over the last 40 years.

BUTTERFLIES AND MOTHS

The key finding, Thomas said, was the “huge diversity of responses” observed in different plants and different locations.

“Because each species is affected by different things … when the climate changes, they will have different availabilities of new habitat that they might be able to move into,” he said.

Not every animal or plant shifts to a cooler place when its habitat heats up, because of pressure from other factors like rainfall, human development and habitat loss.

For example, a British butterfly, the high brown fritillary butterfly, might have been expected to move northward if the only factor affecting it was climate warming. Instead, the species declined because its habitats were lost, the researchers reported.

But the comma butterfly was able to make the leap from central England to Edinburgh, a distance of about 137 miles, in two decades.

In Borneo, moths shifted 220 feet upward on Mount Kinabalu, the study found. This area has been protected for more than 40 years, so habitat destruction was not a factor in the move, Thomas said.

Because of different species diverse reactions, he said, “it’s very hard to predict what an individual species is going to do … and that means that if you want to manage the world in some way, save species or whatever, unfortunately it looks as though a lot of detailed information is going to be required … in order to take practical action.”

By: Deborah Zabarenko
Source: Planet Ark

The right to food, health and shelter is threatened due to global warming, International Relations and Cooperation Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said on Monday.

In drought prone areas it is women who have to [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 08 Aug 2011

The right to food, health and shelter is threatened due to global warming, International Relations and Cooperation Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said on Monday.

In drought prone areas it is women who have to fend for their families

“Climate change affects the economic and social rights of countless individuals. This includes their rights to food, health and shelter,” she said.

The minister was speaking at a consultative dialogue on Women and Climate Change in Limpopo. She said that as climate change will continue to affect humanity, it was key to safeguard the lives of the people that are adversely affected, which are women.

“As incoming president [of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change], I will strive to ensure the centrality of women in all global fora to advance the multilateral efforts to address climate change, which impacts in a very pernicious manner on women, especially in developing countries,” said Nkoana-Mashabane.

Women, she said, are the propellers and carriers of development.

“In flood prone regions, it is women who have to deal with the impact. In drought prone areas, it is women who have to fend for their families ensuring that the children are fed, and that the sick and the indigent are taken care of.

“What we are actually seeing in Somalia are the prolonged consequences of climate change playing themselves out in a context of a country that is torn by civil strife.”

Nkoana-Mashabane said women in the developing world were responsible for the bulk of the food production.

“Women will have to labour harder and longer to ensure their families have food, fuel, and water. It is known that in Africa, women do 90% of the work of gathering water and food, and children, in particular girls, often share these responsibilities.”

The minister said climate challenges cannot be solved without empowering and educating women.

Meaningful interventions to address climate change were now required and Africa needed to adapt in a way which was conducive to the advancement of the emancipation of its women.

“Adaptation must therefore be central to the Durban outcome, with an urgent need for immediate and adequate support for the implementation of adaptation measures and actions, including through the provision of substantial new and additional public financial resources, environmentally sound technologies and capacity building in a predictable and prompt manner,” she explained.

She also added that financing mechanisms must also be flexible enough to reflect women’s priorities and needs.

South Africa will host the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference in Durban in November.

Nkoana-Mashabane also stated that the participation of women in climate change initiatives must be ensured and the role of women’s groups and networks strengthened, as women are currently under-represented in the decision making process of environmental governance.

“What are the most pressing issues for Durban? Most important is the issue of the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which is the only multilaterally agreed legal regime that sets concrete emission reduction commitments to mitigate climate change for developed countries.”

Source: BuaNews

Climate change could exponentially increase the scale of natural disasters while at the same time threatening world security, a senior UN official told the UN Security Council Wednesday.

Floods, such as the ones [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 21 July 2011

Climate change could exponentially increase the scale of natural disasters while at the same time threatening world security, a senior UN official told the UN Security Council Wednesday.

Floods, such as the ones that hit Pakistan, have implications on food markets

Though science cannot yet explain all the reasons behind global warming, “a changing climate is a reality,” and one that effects all sectors of society, said Achim Steiner, director of the UN Environment Program.

Steiner cited a worst-case scenario prediction that temperatures will rise 4 degree Celsius by 2060 while the sea level will rise one meter over the next century.

There are myriad threats already and their numbers will rise, he said, noting droughts like the one currently afflicting Somalia, floods such as the ones that hit Pakistan, and their implications on the food markets.

“The scale of the natural disasters will increase exponentially,” he added.

Two regions of Southern Somalia, hit by a devastating drought, were declared in a state of famine Wednesday by the United Nations, who called it the worst food crisis in Africa in 20 years and have mobilized efforts to stem the situation before it worsens.

“The signs of climate changing, not only is it happening, it is accelerating,” he added.

The famine and rising sea levels “are all threats to peace and security,” said Steiner. The next climate conference will take place in Durban in December and “must be decisive.”

Developed countries must manage their actions but emerging nations must also play their role and cannot be spectators, he urged.

- AFP

Titanomyrma lubei. A winged queen ant that lived about 50 million years ago.

Four paleontologists, including two at Simon Fraser University, have discovered the fossil of a gigantic ant whose globetrotting sheds light [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 04 May 2011

Titanomyrma lubei. A winged queen ant that lived about 50 million years ago.

Four paleontologists, including two at Simon Fraser University, have discovered the fossil of a gigantic ant whose globetrotting sheds light on how global warming events affected the distribution of life some 50 million years ago.

The Proceedings of the Royal Society B, a British scientific journal, has published online today (May 4) their study Intercontinental dispersal of giant thermophilic ants across the Arctic during early Eocene hyperthermals.

The authors are Bruce Archibald and Rolf Mathewes from SFU (British Columbia, Canada), David Greenwood from Brandon University (Manitoba, Canada) and Kirk Johnson from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science in (Colorado, USA).

They describe a new fossil species of giant ant, which they’ve named Titanomyrma lubei. This winged queen ant lived in the Eocene Epoch about 50 million years old. It had a body just over five centimetres long — comparable to a hummingbird — a size only rivaled today by the monstrously large queens of an ant species in tropical Africa.

Archibald found the ant in a drawer when visiting Johnson at the Denver Museum. He says: “What is surprising is that this ant scurried about an ancient forest in what is now Wyoming when the climate there was hot like the modern tropics. In fact, all of the closely related fossil giant ants have been found in Europe and North America at sites that had hot climates.”

The researchers also looked at the habitats of the largest modern ants, and found that almost all live in the tropics, indicating that there might be something about being big that requires ants to live in hot temperatures.

During the Eocene Epoch, many plants and animal species migrated between Europe and North America via continuous land across the Arctic, bridging the two continents. But the mystery is how did these ancient giant ants pass through a temperate Arctic climate — too cool for them?

The researchers suspect that the key is in the brief, but intense episodes of global warming that happened around this time. They appear to have created periodic opportunities for hot climate life to pass between continents through the Arctic. Archibald calls them brief openings of a physiological gate to cross the physical land bridge.

He notes that these findings will help scientists gain a better grasp of the impacts of global warming on life. He says: “As the Earth’s climate changes, we are seeing tropical pest species extend their ranges into mid-latitudes and dragonflies appear in the Arctic. Understanding the details of how life forms adapted to global warming in the past will be of increasing importance in the future.”

Source: PhysOrg

Global warming of the world’s oceans can return huge stores of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere quicker than previously thought, Australian researchers say.

Air bubbles in an ice core; these bubbles preserve an [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 26 April 2011

Global warming of the world’s oceans can return huge stores of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere quicker than previously thought, Australian researchers say.

Air bubbles in an ice core; these bubbles preserve an archive of CO2 and other gases in the atmosphere.

The oceans can take in and hold about 30 percent of human carbon dioxide emissions dissolved in their depths, slowing the rise of global warming somewhat, but as the warming continues the oceans emit CO2 and accelerate the warming, researchers say.

However, while previous studies have suggested it requires between 400 and 1,300 years for this to happen, a new study has reduced that time period significantly, NewScientist.com reported Monday.

“We now think the delay is more like 200 years, possibly even less,” says Tas van Ommen from the Australian Antarctic Division in Hobart, who led the study.

Van Ommen and colleagues studied CO2 bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice cores and compared their measurements with records of atmospheric temperatures from the same time period.

When temperature went up carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased, as expected, but the ice core data showed the lag was about 200 years, much shorter than previous studies found, the researchers said.

Climate modeling will need to be done before any speculation on how the results relate to current warming, Van Ommen said.

Source: UPI

Global warming is a looming threat to stability and national security around the world, and militaries should spend some of their ever-expanding budgets on reducing carbon emissions to avoid “climate chaos,” the U.N.’s top [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 16 February 2011

Global warming is a looming threat to stability and national security around the world, and militaries should spend some of their ever-expanding budgets on reducing carbon emissions to avoid “climate chaos,” the U.N.’s top climate official said Tuesday.

Much of the funding for the growth of armies could help curb carbon emissions that fuel global warming

Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. climate secretariat, warned of the destabilizing effects created by growing water stress, declining crop yields and damage from extreme storms in some of the world’s poorest countries, which could set off mass international migration and regional conflicts.

Figueres said the world’s military budgets grew by 50 percent in the first nine years of this century. Rather than continue that growth in weaponry, she said, the generals should invest in preventative budgets to “avoid the climate chaos that would demand a defense response that makes even today’s spending burden look light.”

She was speaking to Spanish legislators at the national defense college in Madrid. Her remarks were distributed by her office in Bonn, Germany.

Scientists and defense think tanks have warned for years of the heightened military risks created by global warming. In 2007, the U.N. panel of climate scientists said hundreds of millions of Africans will face persistent drought and food insecurity over the next decades that could prompt many to abandon ancestral homes.

Other U.N. academics reported last year that in 2008 alone 20 million people were displaced by sudden climate disasters, at least temporarily, and gradual climate changes over the next 40 years could cause 200 million people — and perhaps up to 1 billion — to migrate.

Figueres said much of the funding that pays for the growth of armies today could help curb carbon emissions that fuel global warming. It also could help poor countries in the most vulnerable and unstable parts of the world to protect themselves from the most devastating effects of climate change.

Militaries should pursue their historic role as technology innovators, she said. “This is an opportunity for the military industry to become the cutting edge of clean technologies that are urgently needed.”

She cited estimates by the U.S. Defense Department that it costs $400 per gallon to supply gasoline to NATO military forces in Afghanistan, and protecting the fuel convoys is a major cause of casualties. Some military bases have begun using solar power to help cut the need to truck in liquid fuels, but the experiments are limited.

Source: Yahoo News

Witnesses to Cyclone Yasi’s destructive tear across northeastern Australia described it as a monster for its size and ferocity. It was also an omen.

Little doubt that storms would become stronger as seas [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 12 February 2011

Witnesses to Cyclone Yasi’s destructive tear across northeastern Australia described it as a monster for its size and ferocity. It was also an omen.

Little doubt that storms would become stronger as seas warm. Photo: National Weather Service/F. Smith.

Climate scientists say global warming is heating up the world’s oceans and atmosphere, providing more fuel for tropical cyclones and creating ever greater risks for crops, miners and billion-dollar beachfronts.

The risks from stronger storms flow right through the heart of the global economy, affecting food security and inflation, iron ore and coal production and higher insurance losses.

Particularly vulnerable are Asia’s booming coastal megacities from Manila to Karachi, large areas of the U.S. Gulf and east coast, Australia’s iron-ore and northern coal mines and tropical Asia’s rice-growing river deltas.

Insurers say unrelenting development along coastlines is placing more homes, businesses and infrastructure in the path of destruction that will drive up insurance losses.

United Nations data says 231 million people lived in cities in Asia in 1950. By 2050, that figure is forecast to grow to more than 3 billion.

Climate change and stronger storms are also a growing threat to Asia’s rice crop.

Asia grows 90 percent of the world’s rice and the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines estimates an additional 8 to 10 million tonnes of rice needs to be produced each year, meaning disruption from droughts, floods and storms can hurt supplies and cause price spikes.

FOOD SECURITY

Munich Re said there were 950 natural catastrophes recorded last year, 90 percent of which were weather-related events such as storms and floods, making it the year with the second-highest number of natural catastrophes since 1980.

A major climate study in 2010 based on the results of a range of computer models concluded there was likely to be a substantial increase in the number of storms in the severe category range of 3 to 5, with 5 being the maximum.

Overall, storms would be between 2 and 11 percent more intense by 2100 and rainfall would increase about 20 percent near the center, it predicted.

The study also found that, with the exception of the Atlantic, there might be a drop in the number of storms in the Pacific and around Australia, but the storms that did form would tend to be more dangerous.

“Since the early 1990s, we have seen a significant increase in the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic,” said Peter Hoeppe of reinsurer Munich Re, pointing to a natural cycle in which hurricane numbers vary over several decades.

“We think now we have a mixture of two phenomena, one is the natural oscillation and the other is the steady increase in sea surface temperatures due to global warming. And this adds up to increased risks,” said Hoeppe, head of Geo Risk Research and Munich Re’s Climate Center.

Hurricane Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005 highlighted that risk, as did Hurricane Andrew that struck Florida in 1992. According to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, Katrina killed 1,500 people and caused $81 billion in damage while Andrew caused $26.5 billion in losses, not adjusted for inflation.

In Asia, there was a danger in assuming nothing needs to be done if storm numbers don’t increase, said climate scientist Johnny Chan, one of the authors of the 2010 review.

“It is a grim picture. Even if the number of storms is not increasing, the amount of rain that comes out of these storms is increasing,” said Chan, director of the Guy Carpenter Asia-Pacific Climate Impact Center at City University of Hong Kong.

Fellow climate scientist John McBride said there was little doubt storms would become stronger as seas warm. Oceans soak up much of the excess heat and carbon dioxide caused by burning fossil fuels and the oceans have already warmed on average about 0.5 degrees Celsius.

“You should expect a shift toward more intense cyclones. That’s coming across as a stronger prediction,” said McBride, of the Center for Australian Weather and Climate Research.

In 2009, typhoons Ketsana and Parma caused damage and losses to crops, property and infrastructure of $4.4 billion in the Philippines, or 2.7 percent of gross domestic product, the World Bank says. For the year, storms led to the loss of 1.3 million tonnes of rice paddy, forcing the country to import.

A year later, Typhoon Megi, a maximum category 5 storm, killed 26 people in the Philippines and caused rice crop losses of more than 520,000 tonnes.

STORM SURGES

Tropical Asia’s vast river deltas are also at risk from flooding and powerful storm surges from cyclones.

Cyclone Nargis, which ripped through the Irrawaddy Delta in Myanmar in 2008, killed or left missing 140,000 people and triggered a 2.5 meter (8 ft) storm surge that inundated much of the delta, wiping out a third of the rice crop.

Reiner Wassmann, IRRI’s co-ordinator of climate change research, said new varieties of rice that were flood and saltwater tolerant would help reduce losses from storms. Faster-growing varieties could also help farmers avoid the typhoon season.

Australia’s A$2 billion sugarcane crop is particularly vulnerable to more powerful storms. Floods over the past several months caused losses of A$500 million, said Steve Greenwood, chief executive of Queensland’s Canegrowers Association.

Cyclone Yasi, a large category 5 storm, caused further losses of up to a quarter of the remaining crop.

But Greenwood said while there was little farmers could do faced with 250 km/h (156 mph) winds that smash cane stems, new varieties could at least reduce losses from flooding.

Hoeppe of Munich Re expected insurance losses to rise, in part because of greater risks to mines, such as Australia’s storm-prone northern open-pit iron ore and coal mines that are central to global steel production.

Australia is the world’s top iron ore exporter and also a top thermal and coking coal producer.

Climate change was already prompting major miners to re-assess the weather risks to their operations and existing designs of infrastructure, such as road, rail and port links and holding capacity of tailings dams, analysts say.

The key to existing strict building codes is the assessment of the return period of extreme weather events. That assessment is now being challenged. Munich Re says weather related natural catastrophes have tripled in the past 30 years in Australia.

“I think what people are still coming to grips with is how the traditional civil engineering design guidelines around return periods. Those are going to change,” said Peter Lilly, a senior minerals and energy strategist at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia.

“The historical 1 in 100, 1 in 200 and 1 in 500 years events are going to change. The traditional design criteria are going to have to change,” he said.

(Additional reporting by James Regan, Rebekah Kebede and Bruce Hextall in Australia; Editing by Alex Richardson)

- Reuters

An architect of Australia’s stalled climate-change policy has linked the nation’s recent natural disasters with global warming and called for a new political push to cut carbon emissions.

Cyclone Yasi - just a [...]]]> Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 06 February 2011

An architect of Australia’s stalled climate-change policy has linked the nation’s recent natural disasters with global warming and called for a new political push to cut carbon emissions.

Cyclone Yasi - just a taste of what could come.

Ross Garnaut, releasing updated advice to the government, said extreme weather events like massive Cyclone Yasi, which hit the northeast coast on Thursday, and recent floods were just a taste of what would come if climate change went unchecked.

“The greater energy in the atmosphere and the seas can intensify extreme events and I’m afraid that we’re feeling some of that today, and we’re feeling that at a time when global warming is in its early stages,” he said in a speech late on Thursday.

Australia accounts for 1.5 percent of global emissions but is one of the world’s top per-capita polluters because of its reliance on coal for around 80 percent of power generation.

Canberra has delayed plans to force polluters to pay for carbon-emission permits on an open market and has instead set up a committee to find the best way of putting a price on carbon.

Greens and independent MPs are involved in developing the new policy, with other options such as an interim carbon tax also being considered.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday reaffirmed a commitment to pricing carbon pollution, likening the move to key economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and saying the move would lead to a new technological revolution in Australia.

The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper has said the government is moving toward the Greens idea of a hybrid carbon-trade plan, with an initial fixed price on carbon pollution until a full carbon market could be established.

The government’s previous carbon-trade plan proposed an initial set price of around A$1 a tonne, before moving to a market price, and emission cuts of at least 5 percent of year 2000 levels by 2020. The Greens want cuts of 25 to 40 percent.

In Europe, the world’s largest carbon market, prices have been trading around 14.50 euros ($19.70) per tonne.

Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has previously played down the benefits of a carbon tax, saying a carbon trade scheme would give more certainty on cuts to emissions. ($1 = 0.735 Euros)

Source: Reuters