It is clear that we need to invest in climate mitigation now rather than later. The sixth assessment report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) showed that mitigation investment pathways could reach global climate goals in a cost-effective manner, however, who should finance those investments are subject of continued debate at the recent COPs.

In a new IIASA-led study published in Science, an international team of researchers explored how global investments could be divided among the countries in the world. The team applied a systematic approach with different equity and fairness considerations and estimated the “fair” financial flows between regions.

The study draws on emerging principles of climate equity and focuses on mitigation investment needs to be deployed near-term to 2030.

“We find that US$100 billion pledged for mitigation and adaptation from the developed to the developing countries is insufficient to leverage the scale of financing required to meet the long-term temperature target fairly. Even under the most favorable fairness assumptions for the rich countries, the global finance flows to the developing countries needs to be scaled up to US$250 to 550 billion per year,” says IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director Keywan Riahi, one of the coauthors of the study.

“Previous work has focused on fair global carbon budget-sharing schemes, but few focus on equity considerations in the financing of mitigation investments,” says Shonali Pachauri, IIASA Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions Research Group Leader and study lead author.

Investing in mitigation actions in low-income regions is not only important from an ethical point of view, but as the authors explain, it can be a productive use of capital.

“We are in the acceleration phase of a range of mitigation technologies. If we are to deploy them at the speed required for our climate targets, we have to make sure that they also happen at scale in poorer regions of the world,” says Christoph Bertram, a researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and a study coauthor.

The researchers found that flows from North America and Europe to other regions would have to increase substantially relative to present levels to meet the Paris Agreement goals under most equity considerations. They estimated that the financial flow required under the selected equity considerations ranges between US $250 billion and $1.5 trillion annually.

According to the authors, the new collectively quantified goal is one of the most important points of negotiation at COP27.

“This is a crucial opportunity for governments to signal to one another and to the private financial sector the magnitude and direction of the necessary financial flows,” notes Setu Pelz, a study coauthor and researcher in the IIASA Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions Research Group.

“Agreement on how to redirect international and domestic finance towards urgent near-term mitigation investments will be critical to the success of negotiations at COP27. Progress here will serve as a clear signal to governments, industry, and non-government actors, and will be crucial for building the necessary momentum in regions where finance is scarce,” Pachauri concludes.

Stony coral tissue loss disease, or SCTLD, was first observed near Miami in 2014 and has since spread throughout all of Florida’s Coral Reef and into the Caribbean, including in waters off Jamaica, St. Maarten, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Belize.

Researchers suggest that transport through ship hulls, where the vessel take on ballast water in one region to keep it stable and release it at a different port, may have contributed to disease spread.

“Outbreaks in very distant locations suggests that disease transport was aided by means other than just ocean currents, such as through ship ballast water,” said the study’s lead author Michael Studivan, an assistant scientist at the UM Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies (CIMAS) and NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

The UM Rosenstiel School researchers conducted two disease transmission experiments in the Experimental Reef Lab at the Rosenstiel School of simulated ship’s ballast water and UV treatment of ballast water to determine whether SCTLD pathogens can be transported in this manner, and whether established ballast water treatment approaches like UV can successfully prevent spread of disease.

The first experiment exposed healthy corals to three types of water: 1) disease-exposed, 2) disease-exposed and UV-treated, and 3) non-disease-exposed water in a flow-through tank system. Over a six-week period, they observed the onset of disease lesions and mortality to determine the number of corals that became diseased, how quickly, and whether UV treatment of disease-exposed water resulted in fewer affected corals. In a second experiment, the researchers held the same types of water in containers to simulate a ship’s ballast tank for one and five days, then exposed the water to healthy corals to determine if the SCTLD pathogens could survive over time, and whether they became more or less infectious over time.

The researchers then tested the ballast water generated for both experiments in collaboration with the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Key West to quantify the microbial communities and their abundance in untreated and treated ballast water.

“The results suggest that ship’s ballast water poses a threat to continued spread and persistence of SCTLD throughout the Caribbean and potentially to reefs in the Pacific, and that established treatment and testing standards may not mitigate the risk of disease spread,” said Studivan.

The Experimental Reef Lab was designed and built by NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory (AOML) and CIMAS at the Rosenstiel School for conducting research on coral response to changing environmental conditions.

The study’s authors include Michael Studivan, Michelle Baptist, Nash Soderberg, Ewelina Rubin from CIMAS; Ian Enochs from AOML; Vanessa Molina and Scott Riley from Excet, Inc., Matthew First from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory; and Ashley Rossin and Daniel M. Holstein from Louisiana State University.

The research study was supported by EPA agreement (#DW-017-92527801), NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program (#31252), NOAA OAR ‘Omics Program, the Louisiana Board of Regents Research Support Fund Research Competitiveness Subprogram (#LEQSF(2020-23)-RD-A-06) and the National Science Foundation Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease (#2109622).

SWOT media reel

SWOT press kit

On Dec. 12, NASA will launch the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite into Earth orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California atop a Falcon 9 rocket. The mission is a collaborative effort between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES) – with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the UK Space Agency – that will survey water on more than 90% of the planet’s surface.

The satellite will measure the height of water in Earth’s freshwater bodies and the ocean, providing insights into how the ocean influences climate change; how a warming world affects lakes, rivers, and reservoirs; and how communities can better prepare for disasters, like floods.

Here are five ways that SWOT will change what we know about water on Earth:

1. SWOT will survey nearly all water on Earth’s surface for the first time.

Water is essential for life on this planet. But it also plays a critical role in storing and moving much of the excess heat and carbon trapped in Earth’s atmosphere by greenhouse gas emissions. It influences our weather and climate as well. SWOT will help researchers track Earth’s water budget – where the water is today, where it’s coming from, and where it’s going to be tomorrow. This is key to understanding how water resources are changing, what impact those changes will have on local environments, and how the ocean reacts to and influences climate change.

2. SWOT will see Earth’s water in higher definition than ever before.

The spacecraft’s science instruments will view the planet’s freshwater bodies and the ocean with unprecedented clarity. SWOT will be able to collect data on ocean features less than 60 miles (100 kilometers) across, helping to improve researchers’ understanding of the ocean’s role in climate change. Earth’s seas have absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers think that short-lived ocean features, such as fronts and eddies, absorb a lot of that heat – and the extra carbon that produced it.

By providing a high-definition view of freshwater bodies, SWOT will help generate a much more complete picture of Earth’s water budget. Many big rivers remain a mystery to researchers, who can’t outfit them with monitoring instruments for various reasons, including inaccessibility. The spacecraft’s instruments will observe the entire length of nearly all rivers wider than 330 feet (100 meters), viewing them in three dimensions for the first time. Likewise, where ground and satellite technologies currently provide data on only a few thousand of the world’s largest lakes, SWOT will expand that number to over a million lakes larger than 15 acres (62,500 square meters).

3. The satellite will address some of the most pressing climate change questions of our time.

An important part of predicting our future climate is determining at what point the ocean slows down the absorption of excess heat trapped in the atmosphere and starts releasing it back into the air, where it could accelerate global warming. SWOT will provide crucial information about this global ocean-atmosphere heat exchange, enabling researchers to test and improve climate forecasts. In addition, the satellite will help fill gaps in researchers’ picture of how sea level is changing along coastlines, offering insights that can then be used to improve computer models for sea level rise projections and the forecasting of coastal floods.

4. SWOT data will be used to inform decisions about our daily lives.

Climate change is also accelerating Earth’s water cycle, leading to more volatile precipitation patterns, including torrential downpours and extreme droughts. Some communities around the world will thus experience floods while other suffer droughts. SWOT data will be used to monitor drought conditions in lakes and improve flood forecasts for rivers, providing essential information to water management agencies, disaster preparedness agencies, universities, civil engineers, and others who need to track water in their local areas.

5. This mission is paving the way for future NASA Earth missions while also building on a long-standing international partnership.

With its innovative technology and commitment to engaging a diverse community of people who plan to use the mission’s data, SWOT is laying a path for future Earth-observing missions. Measurements from SWOT – and the tools to support researchers in analyzing the information – will be free and accessible. This will help to foster research and applications activities by a wide range of users, including those who may not usually have the opportunity to access this knowledge.

Such an ambitious mission is possible because of a decades-long collaboration between NASA and CNES that started in the 1980s to monitor Earth’s ocean. This partnership pioneered the use of a space-based instrument called an altimeter to study sea level with the launch of the TOPEX/Poseidon satellite in 1992. The NASA-CNES partnership has continued uninterrupted for three decades and has expanded to encompass work with other agencies, including the CSA and the UK Space Agency for SWOT, as well as ESA (European Space Agency), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, and the European Commission for the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich satellite, which launched in November 2020.

More About the Mission

SWOT is being jointly developed by NASA and CNES, with contributions from the CSA and the UK Space Agency. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, leads the U.S. component of the project. For the flight system payload, NASA is providing the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, a GPS science receiver, a laser retroreflector, a two-beam microwave radiometer, and NASA instrument operations. CNES is providing the Doppler Orbitography and Radioposition Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) system, the dual frequency Poseidon altimeter (developed by Thales Alenia Space), the KaRIn radio-frequency subsystem (together with Thales Alenia Space and with support from the UK Space Agency), the satellite platform, and ground control segment. CSA is providing the KaRIn high-power transmitter assembly. NASA is providing the launch vehicle and associated launch services.

To learn more about SWOT, visit:

https://swot.jpl.nasa.gov/

Based on a unique global dataset of 830 regional floras and the distribution of 300,000 plant species compiled at the University of Göttingen over ten years, researchers modelled the relationship between plant diversity and environmental conditions using modern machine learning techniques. By incorporating the relatedness of the species to each other, they were able to take into account the evolutionary history of plants occurring in each geographic region. The models were then used to predict plant diversity continuously around the world considering past and present geographic and climatic conditions.

The models capture how diversity varies along environmental gradients and help to identify global centers of plant diversity. Current climate and further environmental factors emerged as primary drivers of plant diversity. The highest concentrations of plant diversity are predicted in environmentally heterogeneous tropical areas like Central America, the Andes and Amazonia, South-East Brazil, parts of Tropical Africa, Madagascar, southern China, Indochina and the Malay Archipelago as well as some Mediterranean regions like the Cape of Africa and locations around the Mediterranean Sea. Modern machine learning techniques and newly compiled plant distribution data were used to design the models. The resulting global maps of plant diversity provide a solid foundation for large-scale biodiversity monitoring and research on the origin of plant diversity and support future global biodiversity assessments and environmental policies.

Professor Holger Kreft, University of Göttingen’s Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography Group, highlights: “The global predictions show in unprecedented detail and accuracy how plant diversity is distributed across our planet.” Dr Patrick Weigelt, University of Göttingen, explains, “Knowing where to expect a certain number of species under present conditions allows researchers to assess future changes due to climate and land-use change as well as to identify impacts of overexploitation and introduced invasive species.”

The new model to predict plant diversity (based on the Global Inventory of Floras and Traits — GIFT database) is available here: https://https://gift.uni-goettingen.de/shiny/predictions/

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If you live in America, transportation is the biggest component of your carbon footprint. To honor Earth Day’s 52 years of environmental action, Earth911 is presenting 52 Actions for the Earth. Each week through Earth Day 2023, we will share an action you can take to invest in the Earth and make your own life more sustainable. This week, review your schedule and identify one routine car trip that you can eliminate.

Action: Cut One Car Trip

Transportation Emissions

The average American generates 3.5 times the global average greenhouse gas emissions, and our cars, pardon the pun, drive a lot of that generation – about 28% of our total GHG emissions result from transportation. Americans drive a lot more miles than any other nation — 30% more than second-place Canada. On average, Americans drive 13,474 miles per year — equivalent to more than four round-trip drives from New York to Dallas — in cars that average 25 mpg, emitting 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

Greener Options

American cities are infamously designed around cars. Elsewhere in the world, urban centers are walkable, with extensive bike trails among neighborhoods and well-developed rail systems providing both intra- and intercity options. But America is not a lost cause. Last year, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided unprecedented funds for more sustainable transportation: $66 billion for passenger and freight rail, $39 billion for public transit; and $7.5 billion each for electric vehicles and zero- and low-emission buses and ferries. Cities are spending big money on bike lanes. Cycling becomes more accessible to less athletic riders and residents of hilly cities with electric bikes. While electric versions of small vehicles emit more emissions than their foot-powered counterparts, they are still much cleaner than cars. Look for ways to incorporate lower-carbon modes of transportation into your routines.

Cut One Trip

It’s well known that a gradual approach makes it easier to eliminate meat from one’s diet (another great way to cut carbon). But when it comes to transportation, once we’ve decided we need a car, we tend to drive for all of our trips, even when there are other viable options. This week, review your weekly schedule and identify one routine car trip that you can replace with a lower carbon mode of transportation.

Is there a public transportation option that serves your work commute? If you can’t bike all the way to work, maybe you can bike or walk to the park & ride. Carpooling — even once a week — is another way to get cars off the road.

Consider other routine trips as well. People usually want their cars to carry a load of groceries, but do you make regular trips to the convenience store? Can you set up a carpool rotation to take several kids to soccer practice in one car? Share a trip to the gym with a roommate or neighbor? Bike to the park or playground with the family on the weekend?

Look at distances – any routine trip that is less than a mile is a good option for walking. You might walk your child to neighborhood playdates. Walk from work to the gym and back before driving directly home. You might park once and walk between errands instead of driving around. Even if all your routes are written in concrete, you might be able to consolidate trips. Try some menu planning to reduce midweek grocery runs (and food waste). Or plan errands along your route home instead of going home and then heading back out later.

If current emissions levels persist, there is now a 50% chance that global warming of 1.5°C will be exceeded in nine years.

The new report projects total global CO₂ emissions of 40.6 billion tonnes (GtCO₂) in 2022. This is fuelled by fossil CO2 emissions which are projected to rise 1.0% compared to 2021, reaching 36.6 GtCO₂ — slightly above the 2019 pre-COVID-19 levels[1]. Emissions from land-use change (such as deforestation) are projected to be 3.9 GtCO₂ in 2022.

Projected emissions from coal and oil are above their 2021 levels, with oil being the largest contributor to total emissions growth. The growth in oil emissions can be largely explained by the delayed rebound of international aviation following COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

The 2022 picture among major emitters is mixed: emissions are projected to fall in China (0.9%) and the EU (0.8%), and increase in the USA (1.5%) and India (6%), with a 1.7% rise in the rest of the world combined.

The remaining carbon budget for a 50% likelihood to limit global warming to 1.5°C has reduced to 380 GtCO2 (exceeded after nine years if emissions remain at 2022 levels) and 1230 GtCO2 to limit to 2°C (30 years at 2022 emissions levels).

To reach zero CO₂ emissions by 2050 would now require a decrease of about 1.4 GtCO₂ each year, comparable to the observed fall in 2020 emissions resulting from COVID-19 lockdowns, highlighting the scale of the action required.

Land and ocean, which absorb and store carbon, continue to take up around half of the CO₂ emissions. The ocean and land CO₂ sinks are still increasing in response to the atmospheric CO₂ increase, although climate change reduced this growth by an estimated 4% (ocean sink) and 17% (land sink) over the 2012-2021 decade.

This year’s carbon budget shows that the long-term rate of increasing fossil emissions has slowed. The average rise peaked at +3% per year during the 2000s, while growth in the last decade has been about +0.5% per year.

The research team — including the University of Exeter, the University of East Anglia (UEA), CICERO and Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich — welcomed this slow-down, but said it was “far from the emissions decrease we need.”

The findings come as world leaders meet at COP27 in Egypt to discuss the climate crisis.

“This year we see yet another rise in global fossil CO2 emissions, when we need a rapid decline,” said Professor Pierre Friedlingstein, of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, who led the study.

“There are some positive signs, but leaders meeting at COP27 will have to take meaningful action if we are to have any chance of limiting global warming close to 1.5°C. The Global Carbon Budget numbers monitor the progress on climate action and right now we are not seeing the action required.”

Professor Corinne Le Quéré, Royal Society Research Professor at UEA’s School of Environmental Sciences, said: “Our findings reveal turbulence in emissions patterns this year resulting from the pandemic and global energy crises.

“If governments respond by turbo charging clean energy investments and planting, not cutting, trees, global emissions could rapidly start to fall.

“We are at a turning point and must not allow world events to distract us from the urgent and sustained need to cut our emissions to stabilise the global climate and reduce cascading risks.”

Land-use changes, especially deforestation, are a significant source of CO₂ emissions (about a tenth of the amount from fossil emissions). Indonesia, Brazil and the Democratic Republic of the Congo contribute 58% of global land-use change emissions.

Carbon removal via reforestation or new forests counterbalances half of the deforestation emissions, and the researchers say that stopping deforestation and increasing efforts to restore and expand forests constitutes a large opportunity to reduce emissions and increase removals in forests.

The Global Carbon Budget report projects that atmospheric CO₂ concentrations will reach an average of 417.2 parts per million in 2022, more than 50% above pre-industrial levels.

The projection of 40.6 GtCO₂ total emissions in 2022 is close to the 40.9 GtCO₂ in 2019, which is the highest annual total ever.

The Global Carbon Budget report, produced by an international team of more than 100 scientists, examines both carbon sources and sinks. It provides an annual, peer-reviewed update, building on established methodologies in a fully transparent manner. 

[1] These estimates include the cement carbonation sink of 0.8 GtCO2 per year

In an article published today (9th November) in the Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, Professor Steve Fletcher, Director of the Global Plastics Policy Centre at the University of Portsmouth, sets out his reasoning for the ambitious target. The team from the University have advised the United Nations Environment Programme, G20, and World Bank on plastic policy, including the possible structure and content of the global agreement to tackle plastic pollution.

Professor Steve Fletcher says “The treaty’s target must be ambitious and meaningful, we are calling for the UN to aim for a minimum goal of 0% new plastic pollution by 2040. To achieve this, policymakers, businesses, researchers and wider society must go beyond the existing best available technology and practice and be radical in their thinking to develop a coordinated global strategy to tackle plastic pollution.”

The aim of the global treaty is to end plastic pollution, but there is no set target yet — this is something that is still to be discussed during the on-going negotiations. Professor Fletcher says: “the Global Plastic Treaty needs a target that is clearly defined. At present, there is ambiguity about what ‘ending plastic pollution’ actually means. For the treaty to work it’s vital for there to be a single target and an agreed strategy.”

The paper explains that as well as a tightly defined target there needs to be aligned metrics to measure progress and that international policies should be delivered by harmonised action at a national level. Together, it is believed, these three components should lead to a systemic shift that is needed to end plastic pollution.

There are nearly 200 nations committed to the development of the Treaty. With each country working with different financial, social and political priorities and obstacles, the University of Portsmouth team believe governments will have to stay focused in their quest to end plastic pollution. The authors of the article say it is critical that the target is clear, measurable, and has a timeframe that is relevant. They also feel it is not realistic to expect countries to clear up all existing plastic pollution. Instead they recommend efforts should be focused on stopping new plastic pollution entering the environment.

Professor Fletcher and the team at the Global Plastics Police Centre say current national plastics policies only address a fraction of plastic pollution. They believe ambition is limited and policies often only extend the time before plastic becomes pollution, rather than tackling the root cause of the problem. They are calling for a globally coordinated approach that regulates the entire length of the international plastics value chains and confronts the environmental, economic and social impacts of misaligned plastic policies.

Lead author, Antaya March, from the Global Plastics Policy Centre, University of Portsmouth, explains the challenges to be overcome: “Plastic is extremely useful, but mismanagement has led to a global pollution crisis that is exacerbating climate change. A complete transformation to a circular plastics economy is needed to radically reduce or eliminate plastic pollution while supporting necessary use.”

The research associate believes local issues are often the result of international problems. Ms March says: “Plastic value chains typically pass through multiple jurisdictions with different laws, rules and norms. At best, country-specific policies, such as bans on specific plastic products, do not have the reach to meaningfully affect global drivers of plastic pollution. At worst, they create international legal and policy inconsistencies that push plastic waste to places with the least capacity to deal with it safely. It is estimated that current commitments to tackle plastic pollution will only decrease plastic entering the environment by approximately 7% by 2040 compared to business as usual. This is why we need an ambitious target that all nations can work towards.”

Professor Fletcher says: “It is a huge achievement that the development of a global legally binding treaty by the UN to end plastic pollution is underway. But to be effective, the global treaty requires new levels of transparency, disclosure and cooperation to support evidence-based policymaking that avoids the fragmented and reactionary policies of the past. A system change needs to arise that fundamentally alters the way we behave and interact with plastic”

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