Linking storms to climate change a 'distraction', say experts

Connecting extreme weather to climate change distracts from the need to protect society from high-impact weather events which will continue to happen irrespective of human-induced climate change, say experts.

Writing in the journal Weather, Climate and Society, the University of Manchester researchers argue that cutting greenhouse gas emissions, while crucial to reducing humanity's longer-term impact on the planet, will not eliminate violent storms, tornadoes or flooding and the damage they cause.

The authors suggest that developing greater resilience to extreme weather events must be given greater priority if the socioeconomic impact of storms, like those that have ravaged Britain this winter, is to be reduced.

Professor David Schultz, one of the authors of the guest editorial, said: "One of the long-term effects of climate change is often predicted to be an increase in the intensity and frequency of many high-impact weather events, so reducing greenhouse gas emissions is often seen to be the response to the problem.

"Reducing humanity's impact on our planet should be pursued as a matter of urgency, but more emphasis must also be placed on being resilient to individual weather events, as this year's storms in Britain have so devastatingly shown."

In the past, say the authors, society responded to weather disasters with calls for greater resilience, but public awareness of humanmade climate change has given climate timescales (decades and centuries) far greater importance than weather timescales (days and years)

Schultz, a professor of synoptic meteorology, and co-author Dr Vladimir Jankovic, a science historian specialising in weather and climate, say the short-term, large variability from year to year in high-impact weather makes it difficult, if not impossible, to draw conclusions about the correlation to longer-term climate change.

They argue that while large public investments in dams and flood defences, for example, must account for the possibilities of how weather might change in the future, this should not prevent short-term thinking to address more immediate vulnerability to inevitable high-impact weather events.

"Avoiding construction in floodplains, implementing strong building codes, and increasing preparedness can make society more resilient to extreme weather events," said Dr Jankovic. "But compounding the problem is that finding money for recovery is easier than spending on prevention, even if the costs of recovery are much higher."

This bias, say the authors, has a tendency to diminish the political dedication for preventative measures against extreme weather, regardless of whether they are caused or intensified by humanmade influences. Yet, steps taken to protect society from the weather can protect the planet as well, they argue.

Dr Jankovic said: "Improving forecasting, increasing preparedness or building better infrastructure can increase resilience and reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. For example, greening neighbourhoods or painting roofs lighter colours will both reduce the urban heat-island effect and reduce carbon-dioxide emissions through reduced air-conditioning costs, while making cities more resistant to storm damage would reduce emissions generated from rebuilding devastated areas."

Professor Schultz added: "Linking high-impact weather events with climate change can be distracting; perpetuating the idea that reducing greenhouse gases would be enough to reduce increasingly vulnerable world populations, in our view, only confuses the public and policy-makers as to the socio-economic susceptibility to extreme weather.

"With or without mitigation, there is no quick-fix, single-cause solution for the problem of human vulnerability to socio-environmental change, nor is there a reasonable prospect of attenuating high-impact weather. Addressing such issues would give the world an opportunity to develop a two-pronged policy in climate security, reducing longer-term climate risks in conjunction with preventing shorter-term weather disasters."

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Hot weather deaths projected to rise 257 percent in UK by 2050s, experts warn

The number of annual excess deaths caused by hot weather in England and Wales is projected to surge by 257% by the middle of the century, as a result of climate change and population growth, concludes research published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The elderly (75+) will be most at risk, particularly in the South and the Midlands, the findings suggest.

The research team, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Public Health England, used time-series regression analysis to chart historic (1993-2006) fluctuations in weather patterns and death rates to characterise the associations between temperature and mortality, by region and by age group.

They then applied these to projected population increases and local climate to estimate the future number of deaths likely to be caused by temperature -- hot and cold -- for the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s.

They based their calculations on the projected daily average temperatures for 2000-09, 2020-29, 2050-59 and 2080-89, derived from the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC), and population growth estimates from the Office of National Statistics.

The calculations indicated a significantly increased risk of deaths associated with temperature across all regions of the UK, with the elderly most at risk.

The number of hot weather days is projected to rise steeply, tripling in frequency by the mid 2080s, while the number of cold days is expected to fall, but at a less dramatic pace.

At the national level, the death rate increases by just over 2% for every 1?C rise in temperature above the heat threshold, with a corresponding 2% increase in the death rate for every 1?C fall in temperature below the cold threshold.

In the absence of any adaptive measures, excess deaths related to heat would be expected to rise by 257% by the 2050s, from an annual baseline of 2000, while those related to the cold would be expected to fall by 2% as a result of milder winters, from a current toll of around 41,000, but will still remain significant.

Those aged 85 and over will be most at risk, partly as a result of population growth -- projected to reach 89 million by the mid 2080s -- and the increasing proportion of elderly in the population, say the authors.

Regional variations are likely to persist: London and the Midlands are the regions most vulnerable to the impact of heat, while Wales, the North West, Eastern England and the South are most vulnerable to the impact of cold.

Rising fuel costs may make it harder to adapt to extremes of temperature, while increased reliance on active cooling systems could simply end up driving up energy consumption and worsening the impact of climate change, say the authors.

Better and more sustainable options might instead include shading, thermal insulation, choice of construction materials implemented at the design stage of urban developments, suggest the authors.

While the death toll from cold weather temperatures will remain higher than that caused by hot temperatures, the authors warn that health protection from hot weather will become increasingly necessary -- and vital for the very old.

"As the contribution of population growth and aging on future temperature related health burdens will be large, the health protection of the elderly will be important," warn the authors, recalling the social changes that have led to many elderly living on their own -- a contributory factor to the high death toll in France in the 2003 heatwave.

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Experts: Oklahoma, not Texas, had hottest summer ever

TULSA, Okla. (AP) -- Oklahoma and Texas have argued for years about which has the best college football team, whose oil fields produce better crude, even where the state border should run. But in a hot, sticky dispute that no one wants to win, Oklahoma just reclaimed its crown.

By Sue Ogrocki, AP

Liz Moody and Stephanie Russell try to keep cool as they watch a softball game in Oklahoma City in July 2011. After recalculating data from 2011, climatologists report that Oklahoma suffered through the hottest summer ever recorded in the U.S.

By Sue Ogrocki, AP

Liz Moody and Stephanie Russell try to keep cool as they watch a softball game in Oklahoma City in July 2011. After recalculating data from 2011, climatologists report that Oklahoma suffered through the hottest summer ever recorded in the U.S.

After recalculating data from last year, the nation's climatologists are declaring that Oklahoma suffered through the hottest summer ever recorded in the U.S. last year - not Texas as initially announced last fall.

"It doesn't make me feel any better," joked Texas rancher Debbie Davis, who lives northwest of San Antonio.

In the new tally by the National Climatic Data Center, Oklahoma's average temperature last summer was 86.9 degrees, while Texas finished with 86.7 degrees. The previous record for the hottest summer was 85.2 degrees set in 1934 -- in Oklahoma.

"I'm from Oklahoma, and when you talk about the summer of 1934, there are a lot of connotations that go with that," said Deke Arndt, chief of the NCDC's climate monitoring branch in Asheville, N.C. "That whole climate episode - the Dust Bowl - that is a point in our state's history that we still look back to as transformative."

Yet the summer of 2011, "was warmer than all those summers that they experienced during the Dust Bowl," Arndt said.

Surprisingly, average summer temperatures are usually higher in states in the Southeast and southern Plains than in states in the Desert Southwest. For example, there are no "cool" spots in Oklahoma during a typical summer, while cooler parts of northern Arizona bring that state's overall average summer temperature down.

Also, the Desert Southwest's generally higher elevations and drier air lend themselves to lower overnight temperatures, which pulls the daily average down, Arndt said.

The record swap became apparent after extra data trickled in from weather stations and meteorological field reports across both states. That data also pushed up Oklahoma's mark as the hottest month ever by two-tenths of a degree, to 89.3 degrees in July 2011.

Oklahoma had experienced unusually dry, hot weather in the winter and spring, then summer brought regular triple-digit temperatures that fueled wildfires, prompted burn bans and led to water rationing in some communities.

"We didn't just barely surpass the previous summer record, we smashed it," said Gary McManus, Oklahoma's associate state climatologist. "That last summer was so far above and beyond what we consider normal, I don't think there will be another, compared to what we had."

Through the years, Texans and Oklahomans have fought over just about everything, from water rights to barbecue joints. Huge crowds attend the annual meeting of the University of Texas and University of Oklahoma football teams in Dallas.

It even took the states until 1999 to settle a boundary dispute that landed before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1894 -- before Oklahoma's statehood.

But residents on both sides of that now undisputed Texas-Oklahoma border want no part in the summer fight.

For Oklahoma rancher Monte Tucker, last summer was a breaking point, and it didn't make him feel any better Friday when he learned about his state's new dubious honor.

Last summer felt like "opening an oven after cooking bread," said Tucker, who ranches in Sweetwater, in western Oklahoma. "We basically got up right about sun-up and did all we could until 11 in the morning, and we basically shut down almost `till dark and kind of started up again.

"I don't want to do it again, I'll say that much," he said.

Last summer also took a toll on plants and trees, many of which were weakened by the intense heat.

"We had to stop planting last summer because it was silly to plant in 100-degree temperatures," said Stephen Smith, who works at Southwood Garden Center and Nursery in Tulsa.

"I've been in this business 30 years," he added. "And it was probably one of the worst temperatures I can remember."

Contributing: Doyle Rice, USA TODAY

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Experts Fear Unknown Impacts of Gas Boom

HOUSTON — Everyone agrees it’s cleaner than coal, but the trend toward making natural gas America’s top energy source is fueling fears that it may not be so great for the problem of global climate change.

While power plants that burn natural gas produce about half as many carbon emissions as those that burn coal—the dirtiest but still dominant source of U.S. electricity—there is little data on the amount of methane being produced by the boom in natural-gas drilling across the country. Scientists say methane has 20 times more impact on climate change than carbon dioxide.

“The greenhouse-gas footprint of natural-gas production is something that needs some really careful scientific and federal studies rather than making generalizations about it,” said John Deutch, chairman of an Energy Department advisory committee on shale gas. He spoke at the IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates annual conference this week, where the focus has been largely on natural gas.

Despite this uncertainty, President Obama has thrown his support behind natural-gas development, precisely because the energy source is cleaner than coal-fired power. Recent discoveries of shale natural gas all over the country promise the United States decades of the domestic energy source. But environmentalists are concerned about moving too quickly to natural gas without knowing its full impact on climate change.

“I’m worried insofar as we don’t have a handle on exactly how much methane leaks,” said Mark Brownstein, deputy director of the energy program at the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the few environmental groups working with industry on natural-gas issues. “If we’re not doing anything to gather the data and we’re not doing anything to cure the leaks, then yes, I do worry. This is a problem that we should be able to get a handle on and solve.”

Shale gas presents the country with several challenges, including concerns about water contamination associated with a controversial extraction method called hydraulic fracturing, along with the fact that near record-low gas prices are reducing the incentive to drill. But the lack of information about methane emissions from gas production may be the biggest problem of all, because it means the nation could be blindly moving toward an energy source that could cause irreversible damage with respect to climate change.

EDF is working with seven oil and gas companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, on a study evaluating methane emissions during the entire production cycle for shale natural gas, including hydraulic fracturing, which injects large amounts of water, chemicals, and sand into a well at high pressures to break up rock and release gas.

“This is an issue we need to take seriously,” Royal Dutch Shell CEO Peter Voser told hundreds of oil and gas executives at the CERA conference. “Clearly more research and hard data are needed.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is working on regulations to limit methane emissions from gas wells, but the lack of data could slow down that process as well.

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Vt. experts: Some post-Irene river repairs harmful (AP)

MONTPELIER, Vt. – In the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene's flooding, Vermont became what one lawmaker called a "lawless state" in restoring its rivers, with crews digging gravel from stream beds and piling boulders on river banks to strengthen them.

Environmentalists and some state officials told Vermont lawmakers Tuesday that the result is serious environmental damage, especially to fish habitats, as well as a possible worsening of future floods.

Vermont has the expertise to care for its rivers in ways that minimize the threat and impact of future floods, said David Mears, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation. But state regulations were relaxed on an emergency basis following the Aug. 28 storm. In some instances, the result sometimes was shoddy river restoration work, Mears and others said.

Lawmakers heard testimony that efforts to put rivers back in the courses they ran before Irene may have done more harm than good in some cases.

"Spending money to do work without consideration for how river dynamics work is just money down the hole," Mears said. "We're just going to replace the same culverts, the same bridges, the same homes, the same roads over and over and over again if we don't do it right."

Ron Rhodes, a river steward with the Connecticut River Watershed Council, told lawmakers Vermont must avoid "more unchecked, unregulated emergency dredging, graveling and channelizing in an attempt to `fix' the rivers. This is a failed practice of our past."

The day began with a talk from Mary Watzin, dean of the University of Vermont's environmental school, who gave the assembled members of three legislative committees a primer in fluvial geomorphology — the science of how rivers change their courses over land. The upshot, Watzin, state officials and environmentalists said, was that rivers need room to run with the least interference possible.

Rivers are speeded up and floods made worse by a range of human activities, they said. Straightening and channeling rivers means they can't meander around bends and dissipate energy. Replacing the soil and vegetation along river banks with boulders or other materials also denies the river a chance to lose some of its power and slow down. Impervious surfaces like streets, roofs and parking lots send storm water into rivers much faster than an absorptive marsh or forest floor.

Some of those involved in Irene recovery efforts used steam shovels and other construction equipment to dig in rivers for gravel to rebuild washed out roads. Patrick Berry, commissioner of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said this practice could hurt populations of brook and brown trout for years to come.

Mears said his department was investigating reports that some people were illegally extracting gravel for sale.

Rep. David Deen, chairman of the House Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources Committee, said later that some of this work was done during prime fish spawning season and that the results won't be known until fish eggs hatch in the spring.

Sen. Richard McCormack, a member of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, said many of his constituents have resented a state law, passed in 1988, that bars removing gravel from rivers.

"You have a culture that to this day has never accepted that they can't," McCormack said. Following Irene, Vermont became a "lawless state" when it came to protecting its rivers, he said, with the prevailing ethic being, "Do what you have to do."

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