Explore Our Planet

Though the eleven year solor cycle as well as the Southern Oscillation hit their minimum 2007 is recorded as second warmth year in the period of instrumental data.

More:
Wikipedia: Solar Cycle
Marshall Space Flight Center: NASA Satellites Capture Start of New Solar Cycle
Goddard Institute for Space Studies : Global Temperature Trends: 2007 Summation

… If Germany halted construction of coal-fired power plants that do not capture and sequester the CO2, it could be a tipping point for the world.

Leaders in Great Britain are advocating a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants; U.S. citizens are blocking one coal plant after another and a potentially course-changing election is nearing.

But time to find the tipping point is running out. I hope that you will give these considerations the urgent attention they deserve in setting your national policies. You have the potential to influence the future of the planet. …

Jim Hanson, Perspective of a Younger Generation

When thinking changes your mind, that’s philosophy.
When God changes your mind, that’s faith.
When facts change your mind, that’s science.
The Edge Annual Question — 2008

How to convince people of the importance to tackle Climate Change? Is it OK to spread subliminal messages when facts does not help? The topic is complex and not everybody has learned to deal with that many facts and prefers other strategies of decision making. Are we equipped to solve problems of this scope?

via Quantinger

Picture Credit goes to Karen Montgomer

Just for reference: not only carbon dioxyde has the capabilitiy to heat up our planet. E.g. a massive amount of Methane reside frozen in the oceans and the siberian permafrost soil.

via Australian Institute of Energy

Finally in a dramatic session the participating countries agreed on the ‘Bali Action Plan’. What do you expect when representatives from over 180 countries come to a conclusion? Would searching the least common denominator lead to a powerless settlement? Will single states block all reasonable steps pretending imbalanced economic consequences?

However, finally the US left their isolated position and US Under Secretary of State Paula Dobriansky took the floor again, said the US wanted a roadmap and wanted to be part of the roadmap.

“We are very committed to long-term greenhouse gas emission reductions,” and she said the US would work with other large emitters to halve global emissions by 2050. And then she said the US “will go forward and join the consensus,” which was followed by a thunderous ovation.

Two results are remarkable: the implemenation of a ‘Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention’ with the mission to collect the input from all parties and present the result at the fourteenth session of the conference of the Parties (Dec. 2008) and last but not least the conference accepted the stabilization scenarios developed by the Working Group III.

You may bring up that’s only a footnote, well it is, but it is written down, it is agreed and is states that an emission reduction of 50 up to 85% is indispensable to stabilize global mean temperature at 2 - 2.4°C above pre-industrial levels.

More:
AR4: Technical Summary of Working Group III / Mitigation of Climate Change
AR4: Chapter 13: Policies, instruments, and co-operative arrangements
Videos: germanwatch@youtube

Australia’s new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd used the opportunity to target Australia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. In opposite to former PM Howard - he claimed the emissions intensive economy will suffer from tackling Climate Change - the Labor Party sets up a strong billion dollar plan to boost renewable energy, clean business, energy innovation and clean coal.

This impressive change now isolates the United States as the only developed nation not having Kyoto signed.

More: Labor’s Clean Energy Plan

The IPCC published the 4th Assessment Report and summarized the results of the 3 previous reports this year. Although the key statements were expectable - to read this compressed knowledge leads to the question how far can and should scientists go by describing their findings and probabilities.

Between the lines resides a ‘what else should be said’ if the world continues with business as usual. Dr. R K Pachauri the Chairman of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change raises in his press presentation these questions.

• How do we define what constitutes ‘dangerous anthropogenic’?
• How do we prepare the human race to face sea level rise & a world with new geographical features?
• Is the current pace and pattern of development sustainable?
• What changes in lifestyles, behaviour patterns and management practices are needed, and by when?

And concludes with the word of Mahatma Gandhi you’ll find here as title.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Madam Ban Soon-taek visited Chile and Antarctica last week (8-11 November). As first Secretary-General he walked on the frozen continent and inspected Collins Glacier on King George’s Island.

I am here today to observe the impact of global warming. To see for myself and learn all I can. We joke among ourselves that we are on an ‘Eco-tour’, but I am not here as a tourist but as a messenger of early warning.

What we saw today was extraordinarily beautiful. These dramatic landscapes are rare and wonderful, but it is deeply disturbing as well. We can clearly see this world changing. The ice is melting far faster than we think.

All this may be gone, and not in the distant future, unless we act, together, now

Look about us. We have seen it with our own eyes. Antarctica is on the verge of a catastrophe - for the world. The glaciers here on King George Island have shrunk by 10 per cent. Some in Admiralty Bay have retreated by 25 kilometres. You know how the Larsen B ice sheet collapsed several years ago and disappeared within weeks - the size of Rhode Island, 87 kilometres.

What alarms me is not the melting snow and glaciers, alone. It is that the Larsen phenomenon could repeat itself on a vastly greater scale. Scientists here have told me that the entire Western Antarctic Ice Shelf - the WAIS - is at risk. It is all floating ice, one fifth of the entire continent. If it broke up, sea levels could rise by 6 metres or 18 feet. Think of that. And it could happen quickly, almost overnight in geological terms.

This is not scare-mongering. I am not trying to frighten you. According to recent studies, 138 tons of ice are now being lost every year, mostly from the Western Ice Shelf.

You know, also that deep blue water absorbs more heat than sea covered with ice. The sea ice around Antarctica is vanishing too.

There are other deeply worrying signs. The penguin population of Chabrier Rock, a main breeding ground, has declined by 57 per cent in the last 25 years. It is the same elsewhere. What will happen to the annual march of the penguins in the future? Will there even be one?

Grass is growing for the first time ever here on King George Island - including a grass used on American golf courses. It rains, increasingly often in the summer rather than snows.

These things should alarm us all. Antarctica is a natural lab that helps us understand what is happening to our world. We must save this precious earth, including all that is here. It is a natural wonder, but above all, it is our common home.

It is here where our work, together, comes into focus. We see Antarctica’s beauty - and the danger global warming represents, and the urgency that we do something about it. I am determined that we shall.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s statement on Antarctica on 9 November

Picture Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

Earlier this year german chancellor Angela Merkel asked climate advisor Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber to organise a symposium with Nobel laureates from various disciplines to focus Climate Change and discuss solutions. The Interdisciplinary Nobel Laureates Symposium profited from independent and open minded characters and was held 8-10 October, 2007 in Potsdam.

Humanity is standing at a moment in history when a Great Transformation is needed to respond to the immense threat to the Earth. Anthropogenic global warming through greenhouse gas emissions is the foremost of an entire set of emerging development, security and environmental crises. Nobel Laureates from all disciplines, high level representatives from politics and world-renowned experts have called for this transformation to begin immediately.

An integrated response will have to accommodate human welfare within the capacity of the planet to sustain economical growth. While drastic reduction in GHG emissions by rich countries is essential, the right for development in the poorer countries, accommodating the vast majority of humanity, will have to be an integral part. This requires, above all, equal access to affordable, sustainable and reliable energy services.

This Great Transformation can only be achieved with a new global contract between science and society which needs to tap all sources of ingenuity and cooperation to meet this challenge of the 21st century. The scientific community and the leaders, institutions and movements representing the worldwide civil society have to engage in a strategic alliance.

The need is to embrace a multi-national innovation program on the basic needs of human beings, requiring the scale of for instance the Apollo Program. In addition, it is essential to remove the persisting cognitive divides and to create a global initiative on the advancement of sustainability science to win over the best young minds for laying the cognitive foundations for the well-being of the generations further down the line.

More: Extensive Version
Papers: Scientific understanding of Climate Change, Robust Options for Decarbonisation, Making Progress Within and Beyond Borders
Picture Credit: Hannah Förster

7 min 38 sec, uploaded November 06, 2007, Transcript

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon invited California’s Governor Schwarzenegger to speak at the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

This high level event “The Future in our Hands: Addressing the Leadership Challenge of Climate Change” on 24 September 2007 was supposed to galvanize political will for the Bali Conference.

More: Dissident Voice / Dan Bacher

Always good for strong words, Professor James Lovelock will held a lecture this evening at Carlton House Terrace in London at 6:20 pm local time. He is famous for his Gaya theory which considers Earth as a living organism and describes very good the feedback effects of our planet. However, he also supports nuclear energy as a ‘green option’ and even more controvery claims.

The Telegraph had a view into the script and cites: ‘Reducing emissions could speed global warming’. Which according to Lovelock leads to the truth, if industry cuts all emissions so fast that the aerosols will outpower the warming of the greenhouse gases. A theoretical but drastic option.

More interesting may be the part on positive feedbacks and seeing Earth from a holistic point of view. The Telegraph writes:

… Prof Lovelock believes that even the gloomiest predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are underestimating the current severity of climate change because they do not go into the consequences of the current burden pollution in the atmosphere which will last for centuries….

… According to Professor Lovelock’s gloomy analysis, the IPCC’s climate models fail to take account of the Earth as a living system where life in the oceans and land takes an active part in regulating the climate….

More: Royal Society Webcast, Public Lecture Info

The NEO Project (NASA Earth Observations) provides an advanced flash interface, map download, analysis features and a full fledged OGC WMS server. The range of available layers are all related to Climate Change and Global Warming.

As a first try ExploreOurPla.net implements 5 layers with interesting data. All of them show combined data of last full month. This leads to full coverage since clouds are elimated. See following examples with direct links to the map interface and the description taken from layer abstract (credits go to NASA).

This map shows the temperature of Earth’s lands during the daytime. Temperature is a measure of how warm or cold an object is. During the day, the Sun’s rays warm Earth’s lands. Some of this warmth rises into the air where gases catch and hold the warmth near the surface. These gases (called greenhouse gases) also help to warm Earth’s land surface.

We can use a thermometer to measure the temperature of any single place. Likewise, scientists can measure the temperature of the whole world from space using instruments carried on satellites. Scientists want to know the land’s temperature for many important reasons. For example, in places where it is too hot or too cold food crops may die.

Temperature also influences weather and climate patterns. So, mapping the temperature of Earth’s lands helps scientists to better understand our world.
(more…)

The ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) sees its responsibility to address, limit or reduce the impact of aviation greenhouse gas emissions on the global climate.

During the latest session of the Assembly - held at ICAO Headquarters in Montréal from 18 to 28 September 2007 - some members (Egypt, Chile, LACAC) expressed their concerns regarding the EU initiative to include aviation into the European Emission Trading system (ETS). Though all members agree on market mechanisms - not taxes - as best solution.

To fly is most polluting means of transportation, by kilometer, hour and person. The emitted amount of CO2 is estimated to double by 2015, including better efficiency of engines. Emitting NOx and steam at high altitude, forming cirrus clouds and trails even multiplies the climate effects by 2-4.

Assuming a trading system for the european airspace only and an average cost of 10 EURO per ton of CO2 tickets for midrange flights (>1500km) will include an extra amount of about 9 EURO.

Until an international agreement is found it is up to the passengers to compensate their emissions for example with atmosfair. This company uses CDM and invests in e.g. hydropower projects in developing countries.

More:
ICAO: Assembly Resolutions in Force (2004)
IPCC: Aviation and the Global Atmosphere
EU/CE: Giving wings to emission trading
Reuters: Britons top table of carbon emissions from planes
International Blog Action Day

While a proper configured WMS server is able to serve tiles off nearly all sizes some clients use an algorythm to stitch tiles with same size together. For example google maps usually request 256×256 px wide tiles.

Using bigger tiles leads to less requests against the server and faster display in your internet browser. On the server side the number of different tiles is no longer endless and a caching is an option. Lucian Plesea extended the WMS protocol to a tiled WMS and speeds up NASA’s JPL OnEarth WMS server.

The new map pack (1444) provides all served maps from this capabilities file except the single monthly Blue Marble Next Generation. Most interesting is Daily Terra combined with the 2007 version of Blue Marble as background. Daily Terra is updated every day and the colors match perfectly BMNG.

This map pack requests 512×512px sized tiles, the performance is much better than the standard OneEarth WMS - zooming and moving means more fun now. Unfortunatly WMS overlays do not work with this projection (for now), but all point data (placenames, weather, tropical storms, videos, hotels, photos, … ) are displayed at the right place.

In the edition of last week the Economist mentioned ExploreOurPla.net :

ExploreOurPla.net brings together thousands of sources of images and data to let users investigate climate change.

The articles describes the new possibilities of combining latest Web 2.0 technologies with geo information.

Sze Ee Lee, a 14-year-old Malaysian girl, has won the 36th Universal Postal Union International Letter-Writing Competition. It is the first time that Malaysia wins the international competition for young people, which has been held since 1972.

Dear People of the World,

Don’t be surprised when you see this letter. Let me introduce myself. My name is Cody, a tiger cub that lives in the rainforest of Malaysia. I may be small but I have seen horrific things done to the creatures of the Earth.

I couldn’t sleep for days when I heard about what had happen to my cousin Nikki. Luckily, he was rescued from the cooking pot just in time. Kind people have since then taken good care of him. So I have many words to say to the people of this planet.

I want to congratulate you all. Many of you have good education and live in your so-called world of modernization. Does this mean that humans are civilized?

Yet, why do humans still need to invade our jungle besides hunting us like in those primitive days. Dear people of the World, don’t burn our homes and occupy the area, our natural habitat. We have no other place to go.

(….. Sze Ee Lee, pdf)

For the 37th competition, the UPU is inviting youngsters to write a letter explaining why the world needs more tolerance - a particularly relevant theme in an age of globalization, migration and other trends bringing ever more people from different cultures into contact with each other.

Every month the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has a look at the month before and publishes a report from a historical perspective.

July 2007 brought record and near-record warmth to the western United States, while much of the eastern and southern U.S. experienced cooler-than-average temperatures, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Below-average rainfall, combined with scorching temperatures, helped put 46 percent of the contiguous U.S. in some stage of drought by the end of July.

The global average temperature was the seventh warmest on record for July, and the presence of cooler-than-average waters in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific reflected the possible development of a La Niña episode.

The Climate Monitoring website acts as a good one-stop website for all kind of data (snow, tornadoes, climate extremes for Las Vegas, global surface temperature anomalies and more.

Up to 80 different fires claimed already more than 50 lives in Greece, Europe. Yesterday Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis declared a nationwide state of emergency, mobilizing all resources.

International help started arriving today, with planes or firemen from France, Italy, and Cyprus and more help expected from Serbia, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. Since June more than 3,000 fires have razed thousands of hectares of forests and scrubland across the country - nearly triple last year’s total - according to officials.

The smoke ranges from Greece to Tripolis, Lybia. Photo captured by Daily Terra - 2007-08-25.