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Australia represent at COP15 from climateshifts on Vimeo.

Coming out of the COP15 meeting, I came across a bunch of rambunctious young Australians. They were protesting Australia’s involvement in supplying 30% of the world’s coal. Their singing was pretty much in tune and their lyrics fitting.

Update – in case anyone missed the cultural reference, the protest song is a cover of a very famous
Australian cricket anthem from back in the 1970’s (click here for lyrics):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL6mWgioXyA&w=480&h=385]

[flickr video=4171621577 secret=ff35e5187f w=400 h=223]

COPENHAGEN. Dec 9, 2009. Extinction of Coral reefs and 10-20% of marine species is likely if greenhouse gases aren’t brought down to 350ppm, warned Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg from the University of Queensland. He gave a presentation at the US Pavilion at the COP15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen about the threat of climate change to the world’s coral reefs. Over 500 million people living in approximately 90 nations are dependant in some way on coral reefs.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg was a contributing author to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2007, which shared the Nobel Prize with Al Gore.

“Carbon and coral reef ecosystems are not sustainable at temperatures that increase up to 2 degrees above the pre-industrial or concentrations of CO2 above 450ppm.”

“Eliminating these habitats will inevitably lead to about 10 to 20% of marine biodiversity going extinct. Thats all those organisms that are highly dependant on coral reefs. And losing coral reefs will have enormous issues for 500 million people living in approximately 90 nations.”

“In the longer term we will have exacerbation of the problems of storm damage and sea level rise if we lose the coastal protection service that coral reefs provide.”

“So one of the most difficult things for scientists to do in a policy environment that finds it difficult to deal with emissions is to tell the truth. Now the truth is that coral reefs don’t do well above about 350ppm CO2.”

“So any pathway in terms of policy has to bring CO2 down below 350ppm. Otherwise we are not going to have coral reefs. And on that pathway we must minimise the amount of time where we get close to 450ppm and these thresholds that are looming. This means some dramatic reductions in emissions. If we don’t make that decision, there is a lot of peoples livelihoods hanging in the balance.” (Read More)

Well, I have been here for a little over three days.  The weather remains grey and non-descript with a bone slicing chill that makes wearing a beanie a delight.  I must admit, however, I am a little worn out – crowds have a way of doing that to you.  And it has been a big year.

Wandering around the Bella Centre in Copenhagen, I have been almost overwhelmed by the number of grassroots organisations that are present. There must be hundreds.  Each one proposing clever ideas by which to solve little parts of this global crisis.  One’s head aches with the amount of information that is being pumped out.

I keep asking myself, is this all for naught or will something magical happen here among all this creativity and goodwill?

I have also been reflecting on how different the current meeting is relative to one I attended in The Hague almost 10 years ago. That was COP6, which was suspended without agreement due to disagreements over carbon sinks among other things.  I remember ‘cunning’ proposals from the Australian delegation being greeted by the Europeans who exclaimed “it may be hard to define what a forest is, but we do know that they are something that kangaroo cannot jump over”. Australia was keen to define scrub land as forest and so on.

This was in the dying embers of the Clinton administration and in the period when John Howard was in the ascendancy in Australia.  This was when Kyoto went off the rails.

Several things are different now. One is that rapid climate change is on our doorstep with the dramatic loss of Arctic summer sea ice and the escalation of fire, storm and flood related impacts.  These incredible changes are hard to ignore.

The second thing is the very different attitude to this meeting with respect to science.  I remember wondering around COP6, feeling a little at a loose end.  But here, it seems that everywhere you look, people are hungry to know what is happening and how much time we have left before we see major impacts.

The last thing is a feeling of thinly disguised despair.  Scratch the surface of this meeting, with all its optimism, excitement and drive, and you peer into a chasm.  This chasm is a world in which the climate has run amok, and the future of us and our children has been dashed upon the rocks.

Let us hope that our leaders will steer us away from this chasm.  To do this, our leaders must come out of the negotiations with a firm agreement that cuts emissions by at least 30% by 2020 and by over 90% by 2050.

Nothing less is acceptable.

Geneva, 8 December 2009 (WMO) – The year 2009 is likely to rank in the top 10 warmest on record since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850, according to data sources compiled by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The global combined sea surface and land surface air temperature for 2009 (January–October) is currently estimated at 0.44°C ± 0.11°C (0.79°F ± 0.20°F) above the 1961–1990 annual average of 14.00°C/57.2°F. The current nominal ranking of 2009, which does not account for uncertainties in the annual averages, places it as the fifth-warmest year. The decade of the 2000s (2000–2009) was warmer than the decade spanning the 1990s (1990–1999), which in turn was warmer than the 1980s (1980–1989). More complete data for the remainder of the year 2009 will be analysed at the beginning of 2010 to update the current assessment.

This year above-normal temperatures were recorded in most parts of the continents. Only North America (United States and Canada) experienced conditions that were cooler than average. Given the current figures, large parts of southern Asia and central Africa are likely to have the warmest year on record.

Climate extremes, including devastating floods, severe droughts, snowstorms, heatwaves and cold waves, were recorded in many parts of the world. This year the extreme warm events were more frequent and intense in southern South America, Australia and southern Asia, in particular. La Niña conditions shifted into a warm-phase El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in June. The Arctic sea ice extent during the melt season ranked the third lowest, after the lowest and second-lowest records set in 2007 and 2008, respectively.

This preliminary information for 2009 is based on climate data from networks of land-based weather and climate stations, ships and buoys, as well as satellites. The data are continuously collected and disseminated by the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) of the 189 Members of WMO and several collaborating research institutions. The data continuously feed three main depository global climate data and analysis centres, which develop and maintain homogeneous global climate datasets based on peer-reviewed methodologies. The WMO global temperature analysis is thus based on three complementary datasets. One is the combined dataset maintained by both the Hadley Centre of the UK Met Office and the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, United Kingdom. Another dataset is maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under the United States Department of Commerce, and the third one is from the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS) operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The content of the WMO statement is verified and peer-reviewed by leading experts from other international, regional and national climate institutions and centres before its publication.

Final updates and figures for 2009 will be published in March 2010 in the annual WMO Statement on the Status of the Global Climate.

Regional temperature anomalies

The year 2009 (January–October) was again warmer than the 1961–1990 average all over Europe and the Middle East. China had the third-warmest year since 1951; for some regions 2009 was the warmest year. The year started with a mild January in northern Europe and large parts of Asia, while western and central Europe were colder than normal. Russia and the Great Lakes region in Canada experienced colder-than- average temperatures in February and January, respectively. Spring was very warm in Europe and Asia; April in particular was extremely warm in central Europe. Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria reported temperature anomalies of more than +5°C, breaking the previous records for the month in several locations. The European summer was also warmer than the long-term average, particularly over the southern regions. Spain had the third-warmest summer, with hotter summers reported only in 2003 and 2005. Italy recorded a strong heatwave in July, with maximum temperatures above 40°C, and some local temperatures reaching 45°C. A heatwave at the beginning of July affected the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and Germany, and some stations in Norway experienced new maximum temperature records.

India had an extreme heatwave event during May, which caused 150 deaths. A heatwave hit northern China during June, with daily maximum temperatures above 40°C; historical maximum temperature records were broken for the summer in some locations.

In late July many cities across Canada recorded their warmest daily temperatures. Vancouver and Victoria set new records, reaching 34.4°C and 35.0°C, respectively. Alaska also had the second-warmest July on record. Conversely, October was a very cold month across large parts of the United States. For the nation as a whole, it was the third-coolest October on record, with an average temperature anomaly of -2.2°C (-4.0°F). Similarly, a very cold October was reported in Scandinavia, with mean temperature anomalies ranging from -2°C to -4°C.

The austral autumn (March to May) was extremely warm in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil. With daily temperatures ranging from 30°C to 40°C, several records were broken during this season. By the end of October, an extreme weather situation affected north and central Argentina, producing unusually high temperatures (above 40°C). Conversely, November was abnormally cold in the southern part of the region, with some rare and late snowfalls.

So far, Australia has had the third-warmest year on record. The year 2009 was marked by three exceptional heatwaves, which affected south-eastern Australia in January/February and November, and subtropical eastern Australia in August. The January/February heatwave was associated with disastrous bushfires that caused more than 173 fatalities. Victoria recorded its highest temperature with 48.8°C. The northern region experienced a cold summer, however, with anomalies reaching -3°C to -4°C in some places. Winter was exceptionally mild over much of Australia. Maximum temperatures were well above normal across the entire continent, reaching 6°C to 7°C above normal in some parts. The national maximum temperature anomaly of +3.2°C was the largest ever recorded for any month.

read the full report here

Result from three Global datasets: NOAA (NCDC Dataset) , NASA (GISS dataset) and combined Hadley Center and Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (UK) (HadCRUT3 dataset)