November 2005

The Amazon rainforest is enduring its most severe drought in half a century and the Brazilian government has declared a state of emergency in the worst-affected area as falling river levels strand communities. Many tributaries in the Amazon basin have dwindled to a trickle or dried up, the result of an exceptionally harsh dry season that some scientists believe may be linked to the violent hurricane season in the northern hemisphere that spawned Katrina, Rita and Stan. The Amazon River Basin ecosystem is threatened by farming, oil development, logging, and road building. The effects of global warming are an additional overarching factor effecting the entire region.

Public awareness of climate change is increasing rapidly because of compelling evidence from an array of scientific studies that greenhouse gas emissions are changing Earth's ecosystems. World leaders and other policy makers have lagged in their response to this overarching global crisis, but policy responses are growing. Addressing this lag is critical to minimizing the adverse impacts of climate change because of additional lags in overcoming the inertia of the systems that emit greenhouse gasses. Conservation Science Institute (CSI) scientists are thus engaged in bridging the gaps between scientific research, public awareness, and policy response through participation in science and policy conferences.

CSI's Science Director (and Senior Scientist with CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research), Dr. Tom Okey, presented work on `Ecosystem-based fisheries management in a changing climate' to the 2005 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. He also attended a September conference in Sydney, Australia entitled `The Great Greenhouse Gamble' where he presented a review of `The vulnerability of Australia's marine fisheries and aquaculture to climate change'. He has been invited to present broader work on climate change effects on Australia's marine ecosystems at the prestigious Priestly workshop after the Greenhouse 2005 conference in Melbourne this November. Other members of Dr. Okey's collaborative CSIRO team are presenting related work at the 2005 meeting of the Ecological Society of Australia (Dr. Anthony Richardson) and at the 2005 Advances in Marine Ecosystem Modeling Research Conference in Plymouth, England (Dr. Elvira Poloczanska). The planned scientific journal publications associated with these presentations will represent a considerable contribution to understanding the ecological implications of climate changes on marine ecosystems. This is just the beginning of our growing capacity to address the climate change crisis.

Considerable policy moves and science advancements are afoot in California, thanks in part to the courage and leadership of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. CSI Research Fellow Meghna Tare attended the 2005 Climate Change Research Conference and Scientific Conference of the West Coast Governors' Global Warming Initiative as part of her climate change research. Supported by the California Energy Commission's PIER (Public Interest Energy Research) program, the conference stressed the need for further research to study mitigation and adaptation options for California and the Western States. Meghna's research was presented by Dr. Stephen Schneider as part of his talk on probabilistic assessment of dangerous climate change. Meghna is studying the impact of climate change on the potential wildfire danger in the Sierra Nevada (Sequoia National Park) as a result of 21st century climate change. She is estimating this fire danger using the Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI)"

The World Wildlife Fund invited CSI Fellow Malin Jennings to speak at its Climate Change Witness Symposium in Tokyo on October 8th. The symposium featured remarks from three people who have first hand experience with the damage and suffering caused by climate change in different parts of the world. The consensus at the end of the symposium was that subsistence populations (hunters, whalers and fishermen who depend almost entirely on what they kill and catch in order to survive) are more vulnerable to climate change and are experiencing it more acutely than anyone else on earth.

Malin presented 50 images - photographs and charts - of climate change damage, such as the destruction of the Alaskan village of Shishmaref or of the Inuit/Inupiaq hunting and whaling culture. She also documented increased malnutrition among several Arctic species including musk ox, reindeer and polar bear, while other species, like grizzly bear, are being dislocated. Grizzlies were seen this summer in Sachs Harbor, Canada, over 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, for the first time in residents' memory.

In addition to Malin, the symposium included climate change witnesses from Nepal and Fiji, who described floods from rapidly melting Himalayan glaciers that have killed dozens of Sherpa people and extreme drought in the South Pacific, which is forcing thousands of people to leave their ancestral island homes. There is no longer enough rain water to sustain them.

The symposium was covered by the major Japanese media, including NHK, the country's largest television network and Asahi Shinbum, the largest Japanese newspaper. Jennings is the founder of Arctic ICCE (Indigenous Climate Change Ethnographies), an initiative to create an ethnographic, videotaped record of traditional Inuit knowledge about Arctic climate change.

Kathy Turco, recipient of the Conservation Science Institute International Environmental Educator Award, was an invited guest speaker at the 8th World Wilderness Congress which took place in Anchorage, Alaska, September 30 - October 6, 2005. Turco's provided 20 natural sound and voice soundtracks to be played in support of speakers and in between sessions at the World Wilderness Congress. Her presentation was about the WWF funded climate change radio programs produced by the students of Huslia and was played at a workshop for the WWC youth (from all over the world) interested in media as a form of public environmental education. Turco also put together a special mix of Athabascan Elders and community members talking about the real affects of global warming for the session on climate change in Alaska presented by an Alaska Native. All of Turco's programs were well received. After the conference, I was pleased to meet with Kathy. She was accompanied by George Atla, a famous Alaska dog musher and important elder. Atla explained to me some of the changes he has seen in the Arctic, not the least of which is the use of more warm-weather breeds of dogs used in mushing. George said, "The huskies are just too hot to race in these temperatures now with global warming."

CSI has partnered with ESPERE, an international association promoting the dissemination of climate information and work carried out by scientists and educators for schools and the public in the field of environmental and climate science. ESPERE is an international contact point optimizing the cooperation of respective efforts; they organize and promote information projects like the ESPERE Climate Encyclopaedia.

First came the monstrous Katrina, then Rita, and the hurricane season is not over yet! Charles, Frances, and Ivan in 2004 are all part of an all too familiar cycle. Most climate scientist and experts have been predicting that global warming will increase such drastic events and natural disasters in the future………. Looking at the recent successive tragedies in Mumbai and New Orleans, that future may be “NOW”.

While people argue whether global warming is responsible for increasing the intensity and severity of hurricanes, the simple fact is that temperatures have risen steadily since 1940's and the average temperature of the world's ocean have increased by 1 degree Fahrenheit. As the temperature rises, the rate of evaporation increases and the amount of water vapor present in the atmosphere rises (water vapor is one of the greenhouse gases). This moisture fuels the hurricanes by spiting the excess water vapor in the form of rain and by driving the convection that fuels hurricanes. Scenarios for future global warming show tropical SST (Sea Surface Temperatures) rising by a few degrees. Sea-surface temperature change in the tropical Atlantic by even a degree can bring major differences to the number of hurricanes generated in a particular year.

Scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Georgia Institute of Technology presented results that showed a steady increase in Category 4 and 5 hurricanes between 1970 and 2005. In the 1970's there was an average of 10 category 4 and 5 hurricanes a year worldwide. Since 1990, the annual number has nearly doubled, to 18. The number of storms that occurred in 2004 was the third-highest number during 1950-2004. The 2005 season is expected to surpass 2004 season in the number of storms and hurricanes.

In an extensive study published in Nature, a 50 % increase in the power of storms in the last 50 years has been reported for the North Atlantic and western North Pacific since the middle of the 20th century. During 1995 to 1999, a record 33 hurricanes struck the Atlantic basin. A recent study published in the journal Science found that while the incidence of hurricanes and tropical storms has remained roughly constant over the last 30 years, there has been a rise in the number of intense hurricanes with wind speeds above 211km/h (131mph). A greenhouse-gas induced warming may lead to a gradually increasing risk in the occurrence of highly destructive category-5 storms.

A reasonable assessment of the science suggests that as increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases cause various aspects of climate to change rapidly over the coming decades. We can expect to face similar events again and that powerful storms are likely to happen more often than we have been accustomed to in the past.

A major coordinated study of the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets intends not only to lay the bald facts before world leaders but offer courses of action. "We want to be more prescriptive," said David Carlson, head of International Polar Year (IPY) starting in March 2007.

The two year study, announced on Wednesday by the International Council for Science (ICSU), will be the first coordinated probe in 50 years of the ice-bound ends of the earth under the onslaught of climate change. ICSU is a non-governmental organisation whose members include the national science academies of 103 countries.

"Part of the reason scientists stay in the comfort zone is that they can always say: 'well we don't know enough,'" Carlson told Reuters. "We are going to take away the uncertainty. If we come out of this and say 'we still don't know enough' then we will not have done our job," he added in an interview.

Scientists say the earth's temperature will rise by at least two degrees centigrade this century due to greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels for transport and electricity, putting millions at risk from extreme weather and rising oceans. A new United Nations' report states that up to 50 million people could become environmental refugees from floods and famines due to climate change within five years. And a study last year found that Arctic temperatures were rising twice as fast as in the rest of the world. "I can guarantee that we will have a much more accurate sea level prediction," Carlson said. "We will know what the West Antarctic ice sheet is going to do. We will know what the Greenland ice sheet is going to do."

One estimate says that if the Greenland ice sheet -- the second biggest after Antarctica -- melts completely, sea levels will rise by seven metres and drown vast areas of the world. But that is nothing compared with the estimated 200 metres that sea levels will rise if all the Antarctic ice melts in the coming thousands of years. Carlson is not worried that the scientists might enter the political arena where -- as was illustrated earlier this year in Britain's struggle to get the Group of Eight to agree a climate action plan -- landmines await the unwary. Right up to the last minute at the July G8 summit in Scotland, US President George W. Bush's officials were stating that global warming was a natural not a man-made phenomenon -- and they even questioned whether it was happening at all. But it is not just rising sea levels that are at stake. The melting of the Arctic ice caps will dilute the salinity of the North Atlantic and slow down the life-giving Gulf Stream current that warms northern Europe. Apart from ice, the IPY research will focus on big themes such as the northern climate system with a faltering Gulf Stream and thawing permafrost, and the ability of the southern oceans to absorb carbon.

CSI Fellow, Juerg M. Brunnschweiler, is the lead author of a recent publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The paper is entitled "Rapid voluntary stomach eversion in a free-living shark," and the authors are Juerg M. Brunnschweiler, Paul L.R. Andrews, Emily J. Southall, Mark Pickering and David W. Sims. The researchers describe their video observation of oral gastric eversion in a free-living Caribbean reef shark (Carcharhinus perezi). They explain the retraction mechanism and describe the reason sharks, and other animals, use this technique to help maintain a healthy alimentary tract. The entire article, including some interesting images, can be found in J. Mar. Biol. Ass. U.K. (2005), 85, 1141-1144 (Printed in the United Kingdom).