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New Spotlightnepal

As Glaciers Melt, Scientists Seek New Data on Rising Seas

TASIILAQ, Greenland — With a tense pilot gripping the stick, the helicopter hovered above the water, a red speck of machinery lost in a wilderness of rock and ice.To the right, a great fjord stretched toward the sea, choked with icebergs. To the left loomed one of the immense glaciers that bring ice from the top of the Greenland ice sheet and dump it into the ocean.

Hanging out the sides of the craft, two scientists sent a measuring device plunging into the water, between ice floes. Near the bottom, it reported a temperature of 40 degrees. It was the latest in a string of troubling measurements showing that the water was warm enough to melt glaciers rapidly from below.

“That’s the highest we’ve seen this far up the fjord,” said one of the scientists, Fiammetta Straneo.

The temperature reading was a new scrap of information in the effort to answer one of the most urgent — and most widely debated — questions facing humanity: How fast is the world’s ice going to melt?

Scientists long believed that the collapse of the gigantic ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica would take thousands of years, with sea level possibly rising as little as seven inches in this century, about the same amount as in the 20th century.

But researchers have recently been startled to see big changes unfold in both Greenland and Antarctica.

As a result of recent calculations that take the changes into account, many scientists now say that sea level is likely to rise perhaps three feet by 2100 — an increase that, should it come to pass, would pose a threat to coastal regions the world over.

And the calculations suggest that the rise could conceivably exceed six feet, which would put thousands of square miles of the American coastline under water and would probably displace tens of millions of people in Asia.

The scientists say that a rise of even three feet would inundate low-lying lands in many countries, rendering some areas uninhabitable. It would cause coastal flooding of the sort that now happens once or twice a century to occur every few years. It would cause much faster erosion of beaches, barrier islands and marshes. It would contaminate fresh water supplies with salt.

In the United States, parts of the East Coast and Gulf Coast would be hit hard. In New York, coastal flooding could become routine, with large parts of Queens and Brooklyn especially vulnerable. About 15 percent of the urbanized land in the Miami region could be inundated. The ocean could encroach more than a mile inland in parts of North Carolina.

Abroad, some of the world’s great cities — London, Cairo, Bangkok, Venice and Shanghai among them — would be critically endangered by a three-foot rise in the sea.

Climate scientists readily admit that the three-foot estimate could be wrong. Their understanding of the changes going on in the world’s land ice is still primitive. But, they say, it could just as easily be an underestimate as an overestimate. One of the deans of American coastal studies, Orrin H. Pilkey of Duke University, is advising coastal communities to plan for a rise of at least five feet by 2100.

“I think we need immediately to begin thinking about our coastal cities — how are we going to protect them?” said John A. Church, an Australian scientist who is a leading expert on sea level. “We can’t afford to protect everything. We will have to abandon some areas.”

Sea-level rise has been a particularly contentious element in the debate over global warming. One published estimate suggested the threat was so dire that sea level could rise as much as 15 feet in this century. Some of the recent work that produced the three-foot projection was carried out specifically to counter more extreme calculations.

Global warming skeptics, on the other hand, contend that any changes occurring in the ice sheets are probably due to natural climate variability, not to greenhouse gases released by humans.

Such doubts have been a major factor in the American political debate over global warming, stalling efforts by Democrats and the Obama administration to pass legislation that would curb emissions of heat-trapping gases. Similar legislative efforts are likely to receive even less support in the new Congress, with many newly elected legislators openly skeptical about climate change.

A large majority of climate scientists argue that heat-trapping gases are almost certainly playing a role in what is happening to the world’s land ice. They add that the lack of policies to limit emissions is raising the risk that the ice will go into an irreversible decline before this century is out, a development that would eventually make a three-foot rise in the sea look trivial.

Melting ice is by no means the only sign that the earth is warming. Thermometers on land, in the sea and aboard satellites show warming. Heat waves, flash floods and other extreme weather events are increasing. Plants are blooming earlier, coral reefs are dyingand many other changes are afoot that most climate scientists attribute to global warming. (NYT)

NY Times Environmnet

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/science/earth/08fossil.html?ref=science

NY Times Link

Link of NY Times on Environment

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/science/index.html

New York Times Blog

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/07/scientists-join-forces-in-a-hostile-climate/?ref=science

Nepal Finalised NAPA

After about thirteen months, Nepal finally prepared National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA). Nepal's cabinet endorsed it last week. Read the article by Keshab Poudel. Follow the link to know more: http://www.spotlightnepal.com/National.aspx

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New Spotlightnepal

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Climate Change affecting South Asia

How Climate Change is affecting life in South Asia visit: http://www.spotlightnepal.com/Others.aspx?ArticleID=171

Welcome to Facebook

Welcome to Facebook

Insights from Denmark television's leading climate journalist, Stefan Kretz

As a consequence of Denmark's hosting of COP 15, Stefan Kretz took charge of a specially created climate unit for Danish television, and spent over a year travelling the world to study impacts associated with climate change.

Insights and images gained from this unique assignment are presented here

Psychological dimension of climate change journalism

Here are the presentations Leonie Joubert and Rasmus Vincentz

Overcoming "climate fatigue"

Presentation by Rasmus Vincentz on 10/08/2010

Field trip: Danish Technical University

Download presentations made in UNEP Risø Centre on Wednesday, August 11:

Risø scientist Leif Sønderberg Petersen's presentation on Climate change science and research developments at Risø

John Christensen, Head of the UNEP Risø Centre for Energy, Climate and Sustainable Development, gave a presentation on the work of the Centre in developing countries, noting the strategic partnerships that have developed to promote best practices, technology transfer and successful CDM projects.

Communications officer Mette Annelie Rasmussen, gave an overview of the communication and outreach efforts she has been engaged in.

Jørgen Fenhann presented a global view of CDM projects; he created the web based platforms for tracking global progress with CDMs (http://www.cdmpipeline.org/ , http://www.cd4cdm.org/ , http://www.cdmbazaar.net/) which are the key reference for all institutions working with CDM.

NGO perspectives

Download the presentation made by Tove Ryding on Tuesday, August 12:

NGO perspectives - Disadvantaged stakeholders and the negotiation process

Climate Change Reporting in Ethiopian media

Download the presentation made by Degsew Amanu on Monday, August 12:

Climate Change Reporting in Ethiopian Radio and Television Agency: An Exploratory Study

Climate change challenges in South Africa

Download the presentation made by Ufrieda Ho on Monday, August 12:

Climate change challenges in South Africa - A personal perspective

Meeting Climate Change Challenge

Download the presentation made by Qiu Dengke on Monday, August 12:

What I do: Meeting Climate Change Challenge

Climate Change Situation in Tanzania

Download the presentation made by Ali Hammad on Monday, August 12:

Climate Change Situation in Tanzania

Challenges and opportunities for Brazil

Download the presentation made by Bernardo Esteves (that's me!) on Monday, August 12:

Climate change: Challenges and opportunities for Brazil

During the presentation I mentioned a video I had made during a visit to one of the towers installed in the Amazon to measure the flux of carbon and water between the forest and the atmosphere (it's part of a huge ongoing experiment designed to investigate the role of the Amazon in climate change).

You can watch this 2 minute video below - it's in Portuguese only, but the images are very impressive.

Climate change negotiations: COP 15 and beyond

Download the presentation made by Adrian Lema on Monday, August 12:

Climate change negotiations: COP 15 and beyond

Climate change in Zambia

Download the presentation made by Benedict K. Tembo on Thursday, August 5:

Climate change in Zambia

Climate change in Ethiopia: an overview

Download the presentation made by Aregu Balleh on Thursday, August 5:

Climate change in Ethiopia: an overview

Nepal's case

Download the presentation made by Keshab Boudel on Thursday, August 5:

Nepal's case

CDM mechanism

Download the presentation made by Rasmus Vincentz on Thursday, August 5:

CDM mechanism: Undersanting CDM; Opportunities; Stories woth following

REDD - Scope, content, opportunities

Download the presentation made by Michael Køie Poulsen on Thursday, August 5:

REDD - Scope, content, opportunities

Climate change science: what's happening?

Download the presentation made by Hans-Martin Füssel on Wednesday, August 4, available in four parts:

Climate science;

Climate policy;

Climate impacts;

Climate sources.

Understanding the present

Download the presentation made by Steffen Johnsen on Tuesday, August 3:

Understanding the present (System failure): Management of the commons; Money and politics; Insights.

More on the wind mill farm

Here you can read the facts about Middelgrunden wind mill farm - without getting seasick!

Himalaya Climate Change

Watch the video made by Krishna Prasad Sigdel presented on Thursday, August 05:

Template for Idea Catalogue

The Idea Catalogue is basically your own personal document, so you can make whatever way you want. But if you would like som inspiration, please click here to get a template.

Group work

The Little REDD Book

Here at the Global Canopy website you will find the Little REDD Book in different languages. But you can also get it here in English and here in Chinese.

Profnet - a way to reach local scientists

Ufrida writes:

A useful online resource for finding scientists and researchers on specialised subjects is PR Newswire. The website is at https://profnet.prnewswire.com/.
PRNewswire is a resource established in 1992 as an online resource for reporters. It hooks up journalists with experts around the world. Great thing is that it's free and you're connecting with experts who want to give their input -you won't even need to chase them down!

Report from NOAA about the global climate

This is the report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Click here to see

National Geographic about glaciers melting

The National Gegraphic has this interesting story about the glaciers melting: Click here

Links to useful documents

This is where you will find links to some documents that will guide you during the course:

Updated Programme

Case Studies

Idea Catalogue presentation