Looming catastrophe of climate change

Fossil-fuel companies have become the “godfathers of climate chaos” and should be banned from advertising in every country, the secretary general of the United Nations stated while delivering dire new scientific warnings of global heating.

Speaking in New York this week, António Guterres called on all media to stop enabling “planetary destruction” by taking fossil-fuel advertising money as he warned the world faces “climate crunch time” in its faltering attempts to stem the crisis.

“Many governments restrict or prohibit advertising for products that harm human health,” he said. “I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil-fuel companies. And I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil-fuel advertising.”

In his speech, Guterres announced new data from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) showing there is an 80 percent chance Earth will breach 1.5C in warming above pre-industrial times in the next five calendar years. 

The WMO says there is a already a 50-50 chance that the global average in the period between 2024 to 2028 will be above 1.5C in warming.

“We are playing Russian roulette with our planet,” he said. “We need an exit ramp off the highway to climate hell.”

According to the European Union’s Copernicus monitoring system, the past 12 months (from June 2023 to May of this year) have already breached this target following a string of months with record-breaking heat, with the average global temperature being 1.63C higher than the pre-industrial average.

Guterres likened the looming catastrophe to the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs. “We’re having an outsized impact and, in the case of climate, we are not the dinosaurs - we are the meteor. We are not only in danger - we are the danger.”

He admitted that the 1.5C target was “still just about possible” but said there needed to be far greater effort from countries to slash carbon emissions, to boost climate finance to poorer countries, and for the fossil-fuel industry to be made pariahs by governments, the media and other businesses.

“The godfathers of climate chaos - the fossil-fuel industry - rake in record profits and feast off trillions in taxpayer-funded subsidies,” he said. “It is a disgrace that the most vulnerable are being left stranded, struggling desperately to deal with a climate crisis they did nothing to create.

“We cannot accept a future where the rich are protected in air-conditioned bubbles, while the rest of humanity is lashed by lethal weather in unlivable lands.”

Guterres attacked fossil-fuel firms for their meagre investments in cleaner forms of energy and for “distorting the truth, deceiving the public and sowing doubt” about climate science.

He called for global bans on fossil-fuel advertising and for public relations and media companies to cut ties with oil, gas and coal interests.

“These companies should stop acting as enablers to planetary destruction. Stop taking on new fossil-fuel clients and set out plans to drop your existing ones. Fossil fuels are not only poisoning our planet - they’re toxic for your brand.”

The speech was timed to act as a rallying call by the UN which is increasingly concerned that the climate crisis has slipped down the list of priorities for a world racked by war in Ukraine and Gaza, and other economic worries.

A meeting of the powerful G7 group of countries will take place in Italy next week, followed by November’s Cop29 climate summit, to be held in Azerbaijan, along with a G20 gathering in Brazil.

Amid this wrangling the impacts of the climate crisis continue to hit home, with countries including India and the US recently gripped by severe heatwaves. 

A study released this week found that extensive flooding that has devastated parts of southern Brazil, leading to 169 deaths, was made at least twice as likely due to human-caused climate change.

But Guterres urged people not to lose courage or hope. “No country can solve the climate crisis in isolation and we do still have a choice,” he said.

“This is an all-in moment. We can create tipping points for climate progress, or we can career to tipping points for climate disaster.”

He warned that it was now the people of Earth versus the polluters and the profiteers – and it is time for leaders to decide whose side they’re on.

“Tomorrow it will be too late,” Guterres concluded. “Now is the time to mobilise, now is the time to act, now is the time to deliver. This is our moment of truth.”

Professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London, Bill McGuire, agrees and says that as a scientist he is faced with “indifference and a failure to understand the reality of the climate crisis every day.

“We must wake people up. Extreme weather, especially heatwaves and floods, is set to be all-pervasive and will have a colossal impact on our lives and livelihoods,” he warns.

“A recent report by the European Environment Agency warned that climate breakdown will bring ‘catastrophic’ consequences for an unprepared Europe, most notably through heat stress, river flooding and flash floods.

“And this applies equally to the UK. Disruption to transport and utilities, interference with industrial and business operations, serious pressures on food production and supply, and increased burdens on the health service and hospitals, will conspire to make day-to-day living harder and far more unpredictable.”

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A Moment of Truth – UN speech by António Guterres (5 June 2024)
Hothouse Earth – by Bill McGuire (2022)

Politicians dither as climate crisis builds

 

GLOBAL heating appears to have entered a new and fast-moving trajectory. Amid record-breaking temperatures, melting ice and a sharp increase in North Atlantic sea surface temperatures during the month of July, veteran climate scientists are now becoming increasingly alarmed about the pace of change.

“A few decades ago some people might have thought climate change was a relatively slow-moving phenomenon but we are now witnessing things happening at a terrifying rate,” said Prof Peter Stott, leader of the UK Met Office’s climate monitoring and attribution team.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has also warned of record temperatures and extreme heat in the near future after confirming the latest climate-heating El Niño event had “arrived”.

The last major El Niño was in 2016 – which to date remains the hottest year on record. But for 2023, it comes on top of increasing global heat driven by human-caused carbon emissions, an effect described by the WMO as a “double whammy”. Its officials say urgent preparations for extreme weather events are now vital to save lives and livelihoods.

“As El Niño builds through the rest of this year, adding an extra oomph to the damaging effects of human-induced global heating, many millions of people across the planet and many diverse ecosystems are going to face extraordinary challenges – and unfortunately suffer great damage,” added Stott.

The WMO estimates there is now a 90 percent probability of the latest El Niño continuing to the end of 2023 at a moderate strength or higher, with the added risk of it supercharging extreme weather.

New records for high temperature have been broken almost daily on every continent in recent months whilst in the UK, the average temperature for June was beaten by nearly a full degree with an unprecedented heatwave also affecting the country’s coastal waters.

Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, admits that he doesn’t fully understand what’s going on with this summer’s crazy climate data.

“It feels to me like the climate may have shifted into some sort of new regime of global heating that scientists don’t yet understand. And yet the media and everyone keep acting like things are basically fine and leaders keep expanding fossil fuels,” he says.

Cambridge University’s Prof Emily Shuckburgh, a leading climate scientist and director of Cambridge Zero, says that after the UK’s record-breaking month of high temperatures, it looks likely the rest of the summer will be warmer than normal too as global temperatures continue to rise.

“We’ve been warning of these changes for 30 years and warning that the planet is overheating,” she told listeners on BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme (3 July 2023).

“We’ve got record melting in Greenland occurring right at this moment, we’ve got record low levels of sea ice in Antarctica. From pole to pole we are seeing dramatic changes and it is nature as well as humans that is witnessing the impact.

“Those extreme temperatures of 40 degrees that we saw in the UK last summer had a dramatic impact on our wildlife and a dramatic impact on us. Across Europe thousands of people died prematurely in that heatwave.

“Sadly the UK used to be a global leader in terms of climate change and it was only two years ago that we hosted the big international climate conference COP-26. We’ve now relinquished that leadership.”

Prof Shuckburgh says the recent progress report from the UK Government’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) on how the UK is doing against its own decarbonisation plans was “covered with red” because goals and targets were not being met.

“We should be responding to the cost of living and energy crisis by investing in insulation, in solar, in wind, offshore and onshore,” she suggested.

Prof Shuckburgh urged people to accept the global scale of what is at risk. “We know that if we don’t respond to climate change as a country and as a world then the risks are enormous,” she said.

“They are potentially catastrophic in terms of our food supplies, the global spread of disease, the risk from migration by communities that have been impacted by climate change, the risk of conflicts and, most importantly of all, the risk of passing catastrophic tipping points.

“This is what’s at stake. The really frustrating thing from my perspective is that we know what the solutions are. We have them at our fingertips and what we need are stable policies in support of them.”

Such stark warnings are echoed by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, who also described addressing climate change as a “human rights” issue.

Evoking a “dystopian future” if urgent action isn’t taken, he said: “Our environment is burning. It’s melting. It’s flooding. It’s depleting. It’s drying. It’s dying. We, the generation with the most powerful technological tools in history, have the capacity to change it.”

He accused world leaders of performing “the choreography of promising to act” before getting stuck in a rut dominated by short-term political expediency. Turk called for an immediate end to “senseless subsidies” of the fossil fuel industry and said the Dubai COP28 (2023 UN Climate Change Conference) climate summit in November and December needs to be a “decisive game-changer”.

At the end of June, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was accused by a resigning government minister and environment campaigner, Zac Goldsmith, of being “simply uninterested” in the environment and climate emergency.

Lame political leadership – mirrored by many of those in power and supported by the fossil fuel industry and elements of the right-wing media – along with a cost-of-living crisis and war in Ukraine, have all contributed to a prevailing laissez faire attitude.

At the start of 2023, when Sunak introduced his five key policy pledges, the climate and environment were noticeable by their absence, a clear indication that the country’s third prime minister in as many years does not view them as a priority.

Nothing has changed and, despite mounting climate relasted emergencies around the world this summer, Sunak, who favours flying about the country on short-haul private jets and helicopters, also shunned a recent Paris summit on the climate, debt and poverty hosted by the French President Emmanuel Macron.

If there can be a final thought and persepctive (for now) on this challenging issue then perhaps, somewhat surprisingly, it might go to the actor William Shatner.

As Captain James T Kirk of Star Trek’s Enterprise spaceship he explored the universe, espousing a vision of the future where humanity had not only survived but overcome many of the Earthly problems we face today.

Last year, 90-year-old Shatner had what he described as a “life-changing experience” when he physically travelled into space for the first time, expecting to experience “a deep connection with the immensity around us” and “a deep call” for endless exploration.

“The strongest feeling I had, that dominated everything else by far, was the deepest grief I have ever experienced. I understood, in the clearest possible way, that we were living on a tiny oasis of life, surrounded by an immensity of death,” he said.

“I didn’t see infinite possibilities of worlds to explore, of adventures to have, or living creatures to connect with. I saw the deepest darkness I could have ever imagined, contrasting starkly with the welcoming warmth of our nurturing home planet.

“This was an immensely powerful awakening for me. It filled me with sadness. I realised that we had spent decades, if not centuries, being obsessed with looking away, with looking outside.

“I did my share in popularising the idea that space was the final frontier. But I had to get to space to understand that Earth is and will stay our only home. It is the final and only frontier, and we have been ravaging it relentlessly, destroying it at an unprecedented rate and making it uninhabitable.” 

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This article by Clive Simpson was first published by Central Bylines under the title, 'Politicians drag their heels as the climate crisis intensifies'.

No time to lose

Photo: Clive Simpson

POLITICAL hot air was a major feature across the world in 2016 as governments and electorates began to shift significantly on their axis of travel - now confirmation has come that it was also a year of record breaking global temperatures, exceptionally low sea ice and unabated sea level rise and ocean heat.

Issuing its annual statement on the State of the Global Climate ahead of World Meteorological Day today (21 March), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said extreme weather and climate conditions have continued into 2017.

Its report, based on multiple international datasets maintained independently by global climate analysis centres and information submitted by dozens of WMO and research institutes, is regarded as an authoritative source of reference.

Because the social and economic impacts of climate change have become so important, WMO partnered with other United Nations organisations for the first time to include information on these impacts.

“This report confirms that the year 2016 was the warmest on record – a remarkable 1.1C above the pre-industrial period and 0.06C above the previous record set in 2015. This increase in global temperature is consistent with other changes occurring in the climate system,” said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas.

“Globally averaged sea surface temperatures were also the warmest on record, global sea levels continued to rise and Arctic sea-ice extent was well below average for most of the year,” he added..

“With levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere consistently breaking new records, the influence of human activities on the climate system has become more and more evident,” said Mr Taalas.

The increased power of computing tools and the availability of long term climate data have made it possible today, through attribution studies, to demonstrate clearly the existence of links between man-made climate change and many cases of high impact extreme events in particular heatwaves.

Each of the 16 years since 2001 has been at least 0.4C above the long-term average for the 1961-1990 base period, used by WMO as a reference for climate change monitoring. Global temperatures continue to be consistent with a warming trend of 0.1 C to 0.2C per decade, according to the WMO report.

The powerful 2015/2016 El Niño event boosted warming in 2016, on top of  long-term climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions. Temperatures in strong El Niño years, such as 1973, 1983 and 1998, are typically 0.1 C to 0.2C warmer than background levels, and 2016’s temperatures are consistent with that pattern.

Global sea levels rose very strongly during the El Niño event, with the early 2016 values reaching new record highs.  Global sea ice extent dropped more than 4 million square kilometres below average in November, an unprecedented anomaly for that month.

The very warm ocean temperatures contributed to significant coral bleaching and mortality was reported in many tropical waters, with important impacts on marine food chains, ecosystems and fisheries.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere reached the symbolic benchmark of 400 parts per millions in 2015 – the latest year for which WMO global figures are available – and will not fall below that level for many generations to come because of the long-lasting nature of CO2.

Among some of the most extreme events in 2016 were severe droughts that brought food insecurity to millions in southern and eastern Africa and Central America. Hurricane Matthew caused widespread suffering in Haiti as the first category four storm to make landfall since 1963, and inflicted significant economic losses in the United States of America, while heavy rains and floods affected eastern and southern Asia.

Newly released studies, which are not included in WMO’s report, indicate that ocean heat content may have increased even more than previously reported.  Provisional data also indicates that there has been no easing in the rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.

“Even without a strong El Niño in 2017, we are seeing other remarkable changes across the planet that are challenging the limits of our understanding of the climate system. We are now in truly uncharted territory,” said World Climate Research Programme director David Carlson.  

At least three times so far this winter, the Arctic has witnessed the Polar equivalent of a heatwave, with powerful Atlantic storms driving an influx of warm, moist air. This meant that at the height of the Arctic winter and the sea ice refreezing period, there were days which were actually close to melting point. Antarctic sea ice has also been at a record low, in contrast to the trend in recent years.

Scientific research indicates that changes in the Arctic and melting sea ice is leading to a shift in wider oceanic and atmospheric circulation patterns. This is affecting weather in other parts of the world because of waves in the jet stream – the fast moving band of air which helps regulate temperatures. 

Thus, some areas, including Canada and much of the USA, were unusually balmy, whilst others, including parts of the Arabian peninsula and North Africa, were unusually cold in early 2017.

In the USA alone, 11,743 warm temperature records were broken or tied in February, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Prolonged and extreme heat in January and February  affected New South Wales, southern Queensland, South Australia and northern Victoria, and saw many new temperature records.

Andrew Challinor, Professor of Climate Impacts at the University of Leeds, said: “The trend in extremes continues – as anyone shopping for salads and veg earlier this year will know. This new evidence comes just days after parliament discussed the independent report they commissioned on the implications of climate change for UK food security.

“Current government strategy emphasises the ability of markets to even out price fluctuations and ensure food supply. The independent report emphasises the need for more joined up thinking across governments and internationally.”

Prof Sir Robert Watson, Director of Strategic Development at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, University of East Anglia, said: “While the data show an ever increasing impact of human activities on the climate system, the Trump Administration and senior Republicans in Congress continue to bury their heads in the sand and state that climate change is a hoax and does not need to be addressed. We are now living in an evidence-free world, where facts are irrelevant.

“Our children and grandchildren will look back on the climate deniers and ask how they could have sacrificed the planet for the sake of cheap fossil fuel energy when the cost of inaction exceeds the cost of a transition to a low-carbon economy.

“How much more evidence does the world need to recognise the dangers confronting our society? The pledges of the Paris agreement are inadequate to limit human-induced climate change to 2C and need to be strengthened significantly – there is no time to lose.”

Sea levels rising

Detroit skyline.                                                                                                          Clive Simpson

Essential indicators of Earth’s changing climate continue to reflect trends of a warming planet, with several markers such as rising land and ocean temperature, sea levels and greenhouse gases all setting new records in 2014. 

The findings are included in the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) 'State of the Climate in 2014' report published this week.

NOAA warns cities and businesses to expect ever higher levels of coastal flood risk after sea levels hit record highs. The agency confirmed that average sea levels have risen by 3.2 mm every year since 1993 - meaning that in 2014 sea levels were about 67 mm higher than in 1993.

The report, which is compiled annually by US government climate scientists, also revealed land and sea temperatures reaching record highs in 2014, while atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases also soared.

Ocean temperatures are at their warmest since records began 135 years ago, the report says. The record warming is contributing to sea level rise - helping to melt glaciers more quickly and causing ocean expansion (water slowly expands as it warms).

Greg Johnson, an oceanographer at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, suggested thinking of the warming effect as if it were a fly wheel or freight train.

"It takes a big push to get it going but it is moving now and will continue to move long after we continue to stop pushing it," he explained.

The report also noted that warmer ocean temperatures raise the risk of severe storms, which are made more dangerous by high ocean levels. Warm ocean temperatures in the Pacific are also producing warmer winters and worsening drought conditions on the US West Coast, scientists said.

The news came on the same day as a new joint report was released by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Lancet Commission, revealing that climate change is jeopardizing the future health of the human population.

Braulio Ferreira De Souza Dias, scientific advisor for the Lancet Commission, said: “We are moving closer than ever before to triggering potentially irreversible impacts, and jeopardizing the health of our ecosystems and that of present and future generations.”

It also comes in the same week as a major report argued that we should prepare for climate change in the same way as we would a nuclear war or terrorist attack - by planning for the worst-case scenario.

Even a small increase in sea level can cause a large increase in the risk of flooding. A global sea level rise of just one metre - the most we are likely to see this century, according to the report's lead author Sir David King - turns what would have been a one-in-a-hundred year flood in New York into a twice a year catastrophe.

State of the Climate in 2014

Global connections

Photo: Clive Simpson

As temperatures across the UK soared again this week it is worth taking note of how meteorological events in one part of the world can trigger weather on the opposite side of the globe.

Last weekend the UK recorded a total of 62,277 lightning strikes as storms moved in from Spain and France.

This followed a mini heatwave which enveloped most of the country, bringing with it temperatures in the low 30s and by far the hottest day of the year so far.

And all this was because of a storm thousands of miles away - super typhoon Negouri which had been churning across the north west Pacific in the first week of July.

As well as bringing strong winds and heavy rain to Japan it also dragged a mass of tropical air northwards and gave the jet stream a kick in the process.

That set off a ripple effect along the jet stream, running across the Pacific and extending its influence out across the Atlantic, forcing the jet stream there to swing northwards across Europe.

Super typhoon Negouri photographed by astronauts on the Space Station.

This is what allowed the exceptionally warm and humid air - known as a Spanish plume - to spread up and across the UK, bringing a brief heatwave before breaking down with severe thunderstorms.

So, a storm over the north west Pacific can set off thunderstorms 10 days later some 10,000 miles away - illustrating in a very real way how the weather in one part of the globe is often directly influenced by what is happens elsewhere.

We’ve also had news this week - data released by NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) - that last month was Earth's warmest June since records began in 1880. It marked the second month in a row the world has set a warm-temperature record.

The average temperature over global surfaces for June 2014 was 1.3 degrees above the 20^th century average of 59.9 degrees. In May, the Earth's temperature was 1.33 degrees above the average of 58.6 degrees.

"The warmth was fueled by record warm ocean temperatures," explained Jessica Blunden, a NOAA climate scientist.

"Large parts of the Pacific Ocean and most of the Indian Ocean hit record-high temperatures or were much warmer than average for the month."

Most of the world's land areas saw warmer-than-average monthly temperatures, with record warmth measured across part of southeastern Greenland, parts of northern South America, areas in eastern and central Africa, and sections of southern and southeastern Asia.

Every continent except Antarctica set temperature records and overall Earth's land areas in June were the seventh-warmest on record. It was also the 352nd consecutive month that the global temperature was above average.

So far, this year is tied with 2002 as the third warmest year on record, with a global temperature about 1.21 degrees above average.

According to NOAA, the last below-average global temperature for June was in 1976 and the last below-average global temperature for any month was February 1985.

It seems likely more records will be broken in the coming months as global warming combines with an emerging El Niño (see Countdown to El Niño).

NOAA currently puts the chance of El Niño forming at about 70% during the northern hemisphere summer and close to 80% during the autumn and early winter.


The Lighthouse Keeper is written by Clive Simpson - for more information, commission enquiries or to re-publish any of his articles click here for contact information

Blue sky thinking

Photo: Clive Simpson

 

Researchers concerned about the climate change potential of condensation trails in the sky caused by aircraft have suggested the impact could be reduced by re-routing flight paths.

Contrails - a cirrus-like cloud - are a relatively new type of high-level cloud that appear in the wake of high-altitude aircraft as water vapour from engine exhausts coalesces.

They can be up to 150km in length and last up to 24 hours, forming when planes fly through very cold and moist air causing engine exhausts condense into a visible vapour.

Founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society Gavin Pretor-Pinney writes in The Cloudspotter’s Guide that we may be surprised to learn that contrails are even classified as clouds.

But clouds they are - and the only difference between them and what nature produces is that contrails are definitely man-made.

Contrails reflect sunlight back into space and so have a cooling effect - but they also trap infrared energy in the atmosphere, which adds to global warming.

Scientists at the University of Reading in the UK have been looking at how the warming impact - which is more significant overall than the cooling - could be reduced by altering the flight paths of long and short haul aircraft.

Previous work has suggested that planes could fly at lower altitudes to limit the trails but this would burn significantly more fuel and adding to CO2 emissions overall.

The Reading study attempted to see if the benefits of curbing contrails would outweigh the extra fuel burned if flights were re-routed whilst at the optimum flying altitude.

They suggest that avoiding the creation of a major contrail on a flight between New York and London would only add 22km to the journey but could curb the flight’s warming impact.

"You think that you have to do some really huge distance to avoid these contrails," said Dr Emma Irvine, the study’s lead author.

"But because of the way the Earth curves you can actually have quite small extra distances added onto the flight to avoid some really large contrails."

The researchers found that short haul aircraft are more fuel efficient and can add up to 10 times the length of the contrail to their journeys and still reduce overall warming potential.

So, if a flight from the UK to Spain is predicted to create a 20km long contrail, as long as the plane flew less than 200km extra to avoid it, the overall warming impact would be reduced.

But for large planes on longer routes over oceans and unpopulated areas - which offer more flexibility to minimally alter flight paths - this reduces to three times the contrail length.

"The key things you need to know are the temperature of the air and how moist it is, these are things we forecast at the moment, so the information is already in there," said Dr Irvine.

On average, 7% of the total distance flown by aircraft is in the type of air where long lasting contrails form but none of the calculations on the impact of aviation on global warming currently include them.

The carbon restrictions being introduced from 2017 for long haul flights originating or arriving in the EU will not include this significant source of warming from aviation.

"The mitigation targets currently adopted by governments all around the world do not yet address the important non-CO2 climate impacts of aviation," said Dr Irvine.

"Contrails may cause a climate impact as large, or even larger, than the climate impact of aviation CO2 emissions.

"We believe it is important for scientists to assess the overall impact of aviation and the robustness of any proposed mitigation measures in order to inform policy decisions. Our work is one step along this road."

Four years ago when flights across Europe were grounded - due to the dust cloud created during the eruption of an Icelandic volcano - our skies and sunsets could be viewed without visible signs of human intrusion.

Contrails and their delicate linear patterns often add a seemingly innocent beauty to the skies above but Pretor-Pinney is not so sympathetic and describes them as "the bastard sons" of the cloud family.

"They may cut dashing figures across the rosaceous autumn evening but these icy swathes of progress must be the writing on the sky for cloudspotters and everyone else besides," he says.


The Lighthouse Keeper is written by Clive Simpson - for more information, commission
enquiries or to re-publish any of his articles click here for contact information

Countdown to El Nino

Photo: Clive Simpson

 

Meteorologists and climate scientists say the world is likely to enter another El Niño weather event by this autumn upsetting 'normal' weather and driving up global temperatures further.

El Niño’s most notable characteristic is the presence of extra-warm surface water in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific ocean which tends to lead to greater average global temperatures.

Climate scientists saw a chance for 2014 to be a record temperature year even before news about the likely development of El Niño conditions - simply because temperatures continue to tick upwards.

“I would have predicted a likely top five if asked at the beginning of this year and the incipient/potential El Niño strengthens that,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, one of the leading agencies that tracks global temperatures and ranks them by year.

“We saw record global temperatures in 1998, 2005 and again in 2010 when ongoing global warming was positively reinforced by El Niño events,” he added.

“There is a good chance we will see a global temperature record this year or next if a substantial El Niño event takes hold.”

Data from ocean observing satellites and other ocean sensors indicate that El Niño conditions appear to be developing in the equatorial Pacific Ocean.

Conditions in May 2014 bear some similarities to those of May 1997, a year that brought one of the most potent El Niño events of the 20th century.


The maps above show the ten day average of sea surface height centred on 2 May 1997 (left), and 3 May 2014. Darker shades indicate where the water is warmer and above normal sea level. Shades of blue-green show where sea level and temperatures are lower than average. Normal sea-level conditions appear in white. The 1997 map is from data collected by the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite, while the 2014 data is from the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2 satellite.

During an El Niño, easterly trade winds in the Pacific falter and allow giant waves of warm water - known as Kelvin waves - to drift across from the western Pacific toward South America.

Surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific become significantly warmer than normal, altering weather patterns and affecting fisheries along the west coasts of the Americas. El Niño can also have a significant influence on weather and climate far from the tropics.

Sea surface height is a good indicator of the amount of heat stored in the water. As the ocean warms, the surface rises; as it cools, its falls. This is due to thermal expansion and contraction; the molecules in warmer water are farther apart than in cooler water.

Above-normal sea surface heights in the equatorial Pacific indicate El Niño conditions, while below-normal heights indicate La Niña.

“What we are now seeing in the tropical Pacific Ocean looks similar to conditions in early 1997,” said Eric Lindstrom, oceanography programme manager at NASA.

“If this continues, we could be looking at a major El Niño this autumn. But there are no guarantees.”

Observations from a network of sensors within the Pacific Ocean support the satellite view, showing a deep pool of warm water that has been sliding eastward since January.

The years 1997/98 brought El Niño out of the scientific literature and onto the front pages and evening newscasts. It was one of the strongest El Niño events observed, with extreme weather impacts on several continents.

North America had one of its warmest and wettest winters on record, particularly in California and Florida. Peru, Mexico, and the rest of Central and South America endured devastating rainstorms and flooding. Indonesia and parts of Asia saw disastrous droughts.

Scientists at the Climate Prediction Center of the National Weather Service (NWS) announced in early May that they foresee a 65 percent chance of a transition to El Niño in the summer of 2014.

"There remains uncertainty as to exactly when El Niño will develop and an even greater uncertainty as to how strong it may become," NWS reported.

All this might just be bad news for climate change skeptics. We've all heard by now the claim that global warming has ‘stopped’ or is ‘slowing down’ but this assertion often takes the very warm year of 1998 as the starting point.

By deliberately beginning with a hot year it can be made to look as though global temperatures aren't rising so fast.

Global temperature anomalies from 1950-2013 from World Meteorological Organisation, with years beginning with El Niño conditions in red and years beginning with La Niña conditions in blue.

You could think of annual global temperature variations as like waves on a rising tide. The rising tide is global warming and the waves are the shorter-term natural fluctuations related to phenomena like El Niño (or its flip-side La Niña), which warm (or cool) the globe by fractions of a degree.

The reality is that, as the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) notes, each of the last three decades has been warmer than the previous one - culminating with 2001-2010 as the warmest decade on record.

Every time the world sets another temperature record, the global warming ‘slow down’ message becomes less compelling and as we enter another El Niño the climate change skeptics may finally be running low on options.

Either they finally accept the overwhelming body of evidence that global warming is real or they can come up with a new cherry-picked counter argument. Have a guess which one they'll choose - for now, at least?

The Lighthouse Keeper is written by Clive Simpson - for more information, commission
enquiries or to re-publish any of his articles click here for contact information

Turning up the heat

One day in the future the Wash will extend inland as far as the cities of Peterborough and Cambridge. That means much of the Fens - including the market town of Spalding where the Lighthouse Keeper currently resides - will be under water.

And, if as expected, sea levels rise significantly the story will be repeated throughout the country - not to mention key cities and settlements around the world.

On the English south coast, the naval bases of Portsmouth and Plymouth will largely disappear. Further north, Hull will be lost, as will much of south Yorkshire.

Middlesbrough would succumb to the waves and, in the northwest, Chester would be flooded. In the east, rising sea levels will eventually claim Felixstowe, Southend and Great Yarmouth.

Around London, the Thames estuary would probably expand to three or four times its current breadth, eliminating most of Dagenham, Stratford and Ilford in the process.

And, unless huge flood defences that dwarf the current barriers are created, the whole of central London would become very seriously water-logged.

But we have to be honest. Despite the mounting evidence are we capable of mitigating such an impending disaster?

Part of the problem is that the world’s own climate disaster movie will be years in the making and is set for release only on an indeterminable date in the future - a distant event horizon.

The worst effects of climate change and global warming for most of us may be perhaps still some 50, 100 or 150 years hence.

But what we don’t know is whether this estimated timescale is fixed. Or will significant trigger points - like the melting of polar ice - have an exponential and accelerating effect?

If the recent European elections are anything to go by climate change, energy policy and the environment will likely disappear into the murky background of science denial and fear in Europe of far-right politicians before the UK’s national elections next spring.

Earlier this year, amid growing warnings about a potential link between global warming and extreme UK weather, Ed Davey, the energy secretary, raised concerns that political consensus about the need to tackle climate change was in danger of breaking down.

He said that the actions of climate deniers - and those in the Conservative and UKIP parties who try to discredit the science - is "undermining public trust in the scientific evidence for climate change".

Criticising those who seize on "any anomaly in the climate data to attempt to discredit the whole", Mr Davey added that "we can see around us today the possible consequences of a world in which extreme weather events are much more likely".

A joint report this spring from the UK Met Office and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, entitled ‘The Recent Storms and Floods in the UK’, points out that the 12cm rise in sea level over the 20th century has already exacerbated coastal flooding.

It goes on to say that a further rise of between 11cm and 16cm is expected by 2030, two-thirds of which is attributable to the effects of climate change.

Last month scientists at a NASA conference announced they had collected enough observations to conclude that the retreat of ice in the Amundsen sea sector of West Antarctica was unstoppable.

Its disappearance will likely trigger the future collapse of the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet - which brings with it a global sea level rise of between three and five metres.

Eventually, rising sea levels will displace millions of people worldwide and one headline in a US magazine reporting the NASA conference ran the headline - ‘This Is What a Holy Shit Moment for Global Warming Looks Like’.

For those who have seen the recent film ‘Noah’ starring Russell Crowe, based on the story of a Biblical flood, there might be parallels to be drawn.

"For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away."                           Matthew 24:38-39

Like the people of Noah’s time, we remain wilfully oblivious to the looming human ecological catastrophe.

Are we prepared to accept huge changes in living standards merely to limit - rather than halt - the rise in temperatures and ensuing problems?

And where capitalism rules, can anyone persuade our politicians to put the future ahead of the present, apart from in a sound bite?

Sometimes the task ahead feels as hopeless as arguing against growing old. This is, indeed, a ‘holy shit’ moment for the world and it seems like something of a miracle is needed.


The Lighthouse Keeper is written by Clive Simpson - for more information, commission
enquiries or to re-publish any of his articles click here for contact information

A perfect political storm

Severe storms continue to roll in from the Atlantic and Britain is in the midst of a winter that has been nothing like a normal winter. Most likely it’s a sign of times to come.

Scientists - without being able to be exact about timing - have long warned us the changes currently happening to our climate would result in more extreme weather.

In the midst of this crisis David Cameron, prime minister, and his cabinet colleagues have been largely content to trade accusations and shift blame, like water off a duck’s back.

Successive governments have done little to plan for a changing climate and the prime minister's bizarre finger pointing underlies how bankrupt his government has become when faced with a challenge of global significance.

His pre-election promise to deliver one of the greenest governments ever has been consistently and systematically dismantled.

Environment secretary Owen Paterson's skepticism on climate change – a ludicrous trait for one in such a position – led him to slash 40% from his departmental spend on developing the UK's adaptation to global warming.

The cost of this winter’s flooding episode alone will dwarf the millions saved by spending cuts. Fixing things and preparing for future storms will run into billions - and that's before we count the cost to our farmers and food production.

Back in 2008, following flooding in his constituency, David Cameron stated that with climate change most people “accept that floods are likely to be more frequent”.

Despite government spending on flood defences under the coalition being cut by 27% another minister, Teresa May, described it no less than six times during a Radio 4 news interview as an "inherited" problem. Maybe she meant from Biblical times.

So, is history repeating itself? All that time ago it was God warning the world - and only Noah listened. Today it is the scientists. Our elected politicians clearly have a lot more listening, and soul searching, to do.

Why does it always rain on me?

The Prince of Wales launched an unprecedented attack on climate change sceptics this week, describing them as the "headless chicken brigade" and accusing powerful groups of deniers of engaging in “intimidation”.

Charles, who has long campaigned to raise awareness of global warming and has hit out at sceptics in the past, unleashed his latest salvo during an awards ceremony at Buckingham Palace for green entrepreneurs.

"It is baffling that in our modern world we have such blind trust in science and technology that we all accept what science tells us about everything - until, that is, it comes to climate science," the Prince said.

"All of a sudden, and with a barrage of sheer intimidation, we are told by powerful groups of deniers that the scientists are wrong and we must abandon all our faith in so much overwhelming scientific evidence.

"So, thank goodness for our young entrepreneurs here this evening, who have the far-sightedness and confidence in what they know is happening to ignore the headless chicken brigade and do something practical to help,” he stated.

Charles, who made his comments at the inaugural Prince of Wales Young Sustainability Entrepreneur Prize, has previously urged world leaders must "face down a storm of opposition from all sides" in order to tackle climate change.

Last year he described those who questioned the need to act as "the incorporated society of syndicated sceptics and the international association of corporate lobbyists”.

Prince Charles was criticised at the time by the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a climate-sceptic ‘think-tank’ set up by former Conservative chancellor Nigel Lawson, which accused him of engaging in "apocalyptic rhetoric".

His latest comments came as it was announced that the deluge affecting much of Britain and Europe in recent weeks is officially the worst winter downpour over southern and central England in almost 250 years.

Rainfall for January - recorded at the Radcliffe Meteorological Station at Oxford University, the world's longest-running weather station - was greater than for any winter month since daily measurements began there in 1767.

The latest Met Office data also confirmed that the region stretching from Devon to Kent and up into the Midlands suffered its wettest January since its records began in 1910.

Ian Ashpole, of the Radcliffe Meteorological Observer, said the Radcliffe measurements went back more than twice as far as the Met Office records and provided a longer term indication of how things are changing.

A total of 146.9 mm of rain fell in January, beating the previous record of 138.7 mm in 1852. The new record is three times the average recorded for the month over the last two and a half centuries. 

It was also the wettest winter month – December, January or February – ever recorded, beating December 1914 when 143.3 mm fell.

In addition, the 45 day period from 18 December saw more rain at Radcliffe than for any such period in the observatory record. The total of 231.28 mm demolished the previous high of 209.4 mm, which fell from 1 December 1914.

For the UK, flooding has been identified as the most dangerous impact of climate change - and it is hitting harder and faster than expected. 

Scientists are now examining whether the current winder deluge is a result of the melting of the Arctic ice cap which has caused the jet stream to track further south, meaning more storms are channeled across the UK.

Prince Charles’ views are backed by mainstream science and it is reassuring to know that our future king is well versed in climate science - though it may be wrong to characterise the deniers in such a way.

Far from being ‘headless chickens’ they are part of an orchestrated and well-funded campaign with very clear objectives - to create a false debate and sow doubt in order to delay for as long as possible the kind of action required to limit CO2 emissions.

What they do is calculated and dangerous for the future of this planet and its people. Thank you, Prince Charles, for speaking up on behalf of normal people everywhere.

‘Why Does It Always Rain on Me?’ is the title of the hit song by Scottish band Travis, released in 1999 as the third single from their second studio album, ‘The Man Who’. It became the group's international breakthrough single and was their first Top 10 hit on the UK Singles Chart.

Warming trend continues

Lord Stern, who completed a review of the economics of climate change for the British government in 2006, says he should have been fiercer in his report.

Speaking at the start of the World Economic Forum in Davros, Switzerland, this week he said governments are “fooling themselves” if they think global temperature rises will only have modest economic impacts.

Stern says things have moved on in the eight years since his review. "I would have been much fiercer,” he admits. "Emissions have gone up faster than I thought and some of the effects of global warming are coming through more quickly, such as melting of the glaciers and the polar ice caps.”

He estimates global temperatures will be 4-5 C higher in the next century on present trends and that governments are being unrealistic if they think this will only have a modest impact on economies.

"The last time we had a change in global temperatures of this order of magnitude it was in the other direction. It was called the Ice Age,” Stern added.

According to new figures released by NASA the year just past tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year since 1880, continuing the long-term trend of rising global temperatures.

With the exception of 1998, the 10 warmest years in the 134 year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the warmest years on record.

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which analyses global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated report this week on temperatures around the globe in 2013. 

The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience temperatures warmer than those measured several decades ago.

The average temperature in 2013 was 14.6 Celsius, which is 0.6 C warmer than the mid-20th century baseline. The average global temperature has risen about 0.8 C since 1880, according to the new analysis. Exact rankings for individual years are sensitive to data inputs and analysis methods.

"Long-term trends in surface temperatures are unusual and 2013 adds to the evidence for ongoing climate change," said GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt at a NASA press conference on Tuesday.

"While one year or one season can be affected by random weather events, this analysis shows the necessity for continued, long-term monitoring.”

Scientists emphasise that weather patterns will always cause fluctuations in average temperatures from year to year but say the continued increases in greenhouse gas levels in Earth's atmosphere are driving a long-term rise in global temperatures. 

Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but with the current level of greenhouse gas emissions, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat and plays a major role in controlling changes to Earth's climate. It occurs naturally and is also emitted by the burning of fossil fuels for energy. 

Driven by increasing man-made emissions, the level of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere at present is higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years.

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, the first year in the GISS temperature record. By 1960, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, measured at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, was about 315 parts per million. This measurement peaked last year at more than 400 parts per million.

While the world experienced relatively warm temperatures in 2013, the continental United States experienced the 42nd warmest year on record, according to GISS analysis. For some other countries, such as Australia, 2013 was the hottest year on record.

The temperature analysis produced at GISS is compiled from weather data from more than 1,000 meteorological stations around the world, satellite observations of sea-surface temperature and Antarctic research station measurements, taking into account station history and urban heat island effects. 

Software is used to calculate the difference between surface temperature in a given month and the average temperature for the same place from 1951 to 1980. This three-decade period functions as a baseline for the analysis. It has been 38 years since the recording of a year of cooler than average temperatures.

The GISS temperature record is one of several global temperature analyses, along with those produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre in the UK and NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in the US. These three primary records use slightly different methods but overall their trends show close agreement.

Polar ice melt

Three major glaciers in West Antarctica (Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith) are melting into the Amundsen Sea faster than previously thought.

ESA’s Cryosat polar orbiting spacecraft possesses the capability to observe features in more detail than previous missions and has revealed that the region is now losing more than 150 cubic km of ice into the sea every year.

Cryosat was launched in 2010 with a radar specifically designed to measure the shape of ice surfaces - and its latest results indicate the loss appears to be accelerating

The data, presented at the recent American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco, show that the loss of ice equates to a 15 percent increase in West Antarctica's contribution to global sea level rise.

Prior to Cryosat, scientists concluded that ice losses from West Antarctica had pushed up global sea levels by some 0.28 mm a year between 2005 and 2010. The new Cryosat data starts from the end of that period.

Scientists say that ice at the Pine Island, Thwaites and Smith glacier ‘grounding lines’ - the places where the ice blocks split from the land and begin to float out over the ocean - is now thinning by between four and eight metres per year.


Three years of CryoSat measurements show that
the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing over
150 cubic kilometres of ice each year.

Launched in 2010, CryoSat carries a radar altimeter that can ‘see’ through clouds and in the dark, providing continuous measurements over areas like Antarctica that are prone to bad weather and long periods of darkness.

The radar can measure the surface height variation of ice in high resolution, allowing scientists to calculate its volume accurately.

Prof Andrew Shepherd of Leeds University, who led the West Antarctica study, said that part of the increase of ice loss could be due to faster thinning and part may also be down to CryoSat’s capacity to observe previously unseen terrain.

The mission has also provided three consecutive years of accurate Arctic sea ice thickness measurements, which show that ice covering Earth’s north polar region continues to thin.

Prof Shepherd added: "CryoSat continues to provide clear evidence of diminishing Arctic sea ice.

"From the satellite’s measurements we can see that some parts of the ice pack ice have thinned more rapidly than others, but there has been a decrease in the volume of winter and summer ice over the past three years.

"The volume of the sea ice at the end of last winter was less than 15 000 cubic km, which is lower than any other year going into summer and indicates less winter growth than usual."

Upping the tempo

New figures released by two climate research bodies confirm that ‘greenhouse gases’ continue to build in Earth’s atmosphere and that average global temperatures made September 2013 the fourth warmest on record.

According to the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) annual greenhouse gas bulletin, published this month, the levels of gases in the atmosphere that are driving climate change increased to a record high in 2012.

Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) grew more rapidly in the year than its average rise over the past decade - and concentrations of methane and nitrous oxide also broke previous records.

The WMO has produced an annual greenhouse gas bulletin for the past nine years and says the warming effect on our climate as a result of carbon dioxide and other gases has increased by almost a third since 1990.

Carbon dioxide is the most important of the gases WMO tracks but only about half of the CO2 that is emitted by human activities remains in the atmosphere, with the rest being absorbed by the plants, trees, the land and the oceans.

Since the start of the industrial era in 1750,global average levels of atmospheric CO2 have increased by 141 percent.

"The observations highlight yet again how heat-trapping gases from human activities have upset the natural balance of our atmosphere and are a major contribution to climate change," said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud.

"It is a worry - the more we delay action the bigger the risk we cannot stay under the 2C limit that countries have agreed," he added.

While the daily measurement of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded the symbolic 400ppm mark in May this year, the global annual average CO2 concentration will cross this point in 2015 or 2016, says the WMO.

Levels of methane also reached record highs in 2012 maintaining an upward trend since 2007 which has followed a period when they appeared to be levelling off.

Recent research indicates that the rate of increase in emissions might be slowing down - but even so the gases can continue to concentrate in the atmosphere and exert a climate influence for hundreds if not thousands of years.

Scientists suggest that the new data indicates that, after a slowdown in the rate of temperature increases over the past 14 years, global warming is returning with a vengeance.

"For the past decade or so the oceans have been sucking up this extra heat, meaning that surface temperatures have only increased slowly," said Prof Piers Forster of Leeds University.

"Don't expect this state of affairs to continue though - the extra heat will eventually come out and bite us, so there will be strong warming over the coming decades."

Should we be surprised? Not really. In September the UN's climate science panel, the IPCC, said that atmospheric CO2 concentrations were at levels ‘unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years’.

The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea levels were up to 40 metres higher than today.

But, as the WMO points out, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is only half of the picture as much of the CO2 is being absorbed by the oceans.

Annual worldwide emissions from power plants, cars and other human activities are currently several billion tonnes too high to keep global temperature rises below 2C and show no sign of stopping.

Other figures released recently by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center under its ‘State of the Climate: Global Analysis for September 2013' show the combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for September 2013 tied with 2003 as the fourth highest for September on record - at 0.64C above the 20th century average of 15.0C.

The global land surface temperature was 0.89C above the 20th century average of 12.0C, marking the sixth warmest September on record.

For the ocean, the September global sea surface temperature was 0.54C above the 20th Century average of 16.2C, tying with 2006 as the fourth highest for September on record.

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for January to September was 0.6C above the 20th century average of 14.1C, tying with 2003 as the sixth warmest such period on record.

Back to the blues

There is sometimes a fine line when it comes to discerning the difference between the colours of green and blue - as British Prime Minister David Cameron has been finding out.

His bold claim on coming to power to be leading the "greenest government ever" seems to be turning into something of a wistful ruse at best.

The summer’s unresolved fracas over fracking for shale gas didn’t really help matters but the latest salver came from a more unlikely source - a Conservative party donor.

Alexander Temarko, a significant British energy investor, claims investors in renewable technologies are being scared off by "seriously mis-leading" messages from the Government.

The Russian businessman, who has made donations in excess of £50,000 to the Conservative party, believes the Government is now paying little more than "lip service" to renewable energy.

Temarko says that failing to provide the clear targets investors need before committing to long term green electricity generation projects is squandering the opportunity to create thousands of jobs and generate billions of pounds in revenues.

The charge is levelled equally at the Prime Minister, his Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, and, to a lesser extent, at Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary.

In fairness, Davey campaigned to include a requirement in the Energy Bill - currently progressing through Parliament - that would have required the UK's electricity supply to become almost entirely ‘green' by 2030.

But Osborne replaced the target with less onerous wording that grants the Government the power from 2016 to require Britain's electricity supply to become almost entirely green only at some point in the future and should it choose to do so.

All this comes at a time when the country’s profit-hungry big six energy companies are about to announce another inflation-busting price hike to gas and electricity prices.

An exception to the rule is Ecotricity which announced mid-September that it was ending its ‘Big Six price match’ under which the small energy provider had matched each Big Six standard tariff in their home regions.

This delivered green energy for the price of brown and meant that, for most people in Britain, it costs no more to be with Ecotricity.

The company’s new pricing promise is that it will charge less than each of the Big Six standard tariffs - delivering green energy for less than the price of brown.

In the meantime, the Prime Minister and his Government’s ‘green' credentials have shifted chamaeleon-like back through the political colour spectrum to the traditional Conservative party blue.

And Temarko is right in one sense - the lack of a sound, long term energy policy is doing no one in the UK any favours.

This piece was originally scheduled for publication on 21 September 2013 but the Lighthouse Keeper was unable to access his blog due to Chinese internet restrictions whilst on assignment in Beijing and so it has been published retrospectively. The title is inspired by the album of the same name from the late Gary Moore (1952 – 2011), a musician from Belfast, Northern Ireland, best recognised as a blues rock guitarist and singer. In a career dating back to the 1960s, Moore played with artists including Phil Lynott and Brian Downey and was a member of the Irish rock band Thin Lizzy.

Unfrozen planet

Whilst much of the world is in the grip of a financial, economic and industrial crisis, the remorseless growth of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming continues unchecked.

New figures on global carbon dioxide emissions for 2010 from the US Department of Energy make sobering, not to say chilling, reading.

The headline figure is that world carbon dioxide jumped by its largest ever amount in a single year, from 31.6 to 33.5 billion tons. However, close scrutiny of the data from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory reveals other patterns that are just as disturbing.

The key one is the explosive and seemingly unstoppable growth in emissions from China, which leapt by 9.3 per cent over the year to 8.15 billion tons of carbon dioxide. The Chinese are now producing 24.3 per cent of global carbon emissions and have firmly overtaken the US the role of the world's biggest polluter.

Polar scientists also warned this month that Earth's frozen ‘cryosphere’ - from the Arctic Sea in the north to the massive Antarctic ice shelves in the south - is showing unequivocal signs of climate change as global warming accelerates the melting of the planet's coldest regions.

A rapid loss of ice is clear from the records kept by military submarines, from land measurements taken over many decades and by satellite observations from space. It can be seen on the ice sheets of Greenland, the glaciers of mountain ranges from the Andes to the Himalayas, and the vast ice shelves that stretch out into the sea from the Antarctic continent.

The effect of the melting cryosphere will be felt by rapidly rising sea levels that threaten to flood coastal cities and low-lying nations, changes to the circulation of ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream, and possible alterations to the weather patterns that influence more southerly regions of the northern hemisphere.

One of the greatest threats is the melting of the permafrost regions of the northern hemisphere which could release vast quantities of methane gas from frozen deposits stored underground for many thousands of years. Scientists are already seeing an increase in methane concentrations in the atmosphere that could be the result of melting permafrost.

"The melting of the cryosphere is such a clear, visibly graphic signal of climate change. Almost every aspect is changing and, if you take the global average, it is all in one direction," said Prof David Vaughan, a geologist at the British Antarctic Survey based in Cambridge, England.

One of the clearest signals of climate change is the rapid loss of floating sea ice in the Arctic, which has been monitored by satellites since the late 1970s and by nuclear submarines since the beginning of the cold war, according to Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University.

Sea ice is retreating faster and further than at any time on record and this year it probably reached an all-time record minimum in terms of volume and a close second in terms of surface area. On current projections, if the current rate of loss continues, there could be virtually no September sea ice as early as 2015, Prof Wadhams said.

The illustration below, based on NASA satellite data, shows how minimum sea ice extent for 2011, reached on 9 September, declined to a level far smaller than the 30-year average (in yellow) and opened up Northwest Passage shipping lanes (in red).