Climate Change News - September 21, 2015 | Newsletter

This image from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that global average temperatures on land and over oceans were an average of 1.48 degrees F warmer than the 20th century average, making August 2015 the hottest August on record. Image courtesy of NOAA.

Action on Climate Change Sought by Group of House Republicans

On September 17, a group of eleven House Republicans led by Rep. Chris Gibson (R-NY) introduced a resolution calling for increased study and ways to address climate change, including mitigating human activities that contribute to climate change. The resolution does not call for any specific action to be taken in regards to emissions. Rep. Gibson commented, "The most important first step forward is recognizing that this is also a fundamentally conservative issue.” The Republican lawmakers introduced the resolution exactly one week prior to Pope Francis’ address to a joint session of Congress.

For more information see:

Rep. Gibson, The Guardian, The Hill, National Journal

Faith Activists Deliver 166 Letters to Catholic Lawmakers on Climate Change

On September 16, faith activists convened by the Franciscan Action Network and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network delivered 166 copies of the Pope's encyclical on climate change and a letter supporting HR 1027 to every Catholic member of Congress. HR 1027, the "Healthy Climate and Family Security Act," sponsored by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), would place a fee on U.S. carbon emissions and return the revenue to all American citizens in quarterly "carbon dividends." The pope is speaking to a joint session of Congress on September 24.

For more information see:

Press Release, Letter

U.S. and Chinese Cities Hold Joint Climate Summit

On September 15 and 16, one week before President Xi Jinping’s state visit to Washington, DC, the first session of the U.S.-China Climate-Smart/Low-Carbon Cities Summit was held in Los Angeles. During the meeting, American cities pledged to extensive reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while Chinese cities pledged to reach peak emissions by certain dates. Notably, Beijing and Guangzhou committed to achieve peak emissions by 2020, 10 years before China's national peak emissions target. Brian Deese, a senior adviser to the President, noted that this announcement is a "very important component of our broader efforts to deepen climate cooperation and to show that . . . the two largest emitters in the world are taking seriously our obligation to meet the ambitious goals that we set out last year.”

For more information see:

The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Whitehouse.gov, NBC News

UN Climate Chief: International Commitments Add Up to Increase Greater than 2 degrees C

On September 15, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), stated that current proposed national climate commitments would limit global temperature increases to three degrees Celsius by 2100. Scientists have agreed that a global average temperature increase above two degrees C will cause dangerous climate change. During a presentation the following day, Figueres said that in order to cap warming at two degrees C by 2030, the global community would have already needed to reduce emissions by approximately 15 gigatons; current proposed commitments add up to a reduction of about five gigatons by 2030. Figueres said commitments were "movement in the right direction, but it does not get us to the two degree pathway."

For more information see:

Politico (EU), Union of Concerned Scientists

Almost Half of World's Largest Companies Are Trying to Stop Climate Action

On September 16, a new study released by InfluenceMap, using a methodology developed with the Union of Concerned Scientists, found that 45 percent of the world's largest companies are working to obstruct legislation that tackles climate change. A further 95 percent of the companies belong to a trade association which is working to halt climate action. InfluenceMap judged companies in industries from transportation to energy, and gave them a grade of A for positive action to F for negative action. The bottom four companies were Koch Industries, Phillips 66, Reliance Industries, and Duke Energy, three of which are located in the United States.

For more information see:

EcoWatch, Bloomberg BNA, Study

2015 Arctic Summer Sea Ice Minimum Is Fourth Lowest on Record

On September 15, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder announced the Arctic sea ice extent reached a minimum in 2015 that was 699,000 square miles lower than the 1981-2010 average. "This year is the fourth lowest, and yet we haven't seen any major weather event or persistent weather pattern in the Arctic this summer that helped push the extent lower, as often happens," said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Melting was slow in June, but picked up throughout August when ice loss is typically expected to slow down, reinforcing conclusions that the Arctic ice sheet is in a long-term decline.

For more information see:

ScienceDaily, Washington Post, USA Today

Study Finds Sierra Nevada Snowpack at Lowest Level in 500 Years

On September 14, a study published in Nature Climate Change estimated that the snowpack on April 1, 2015 in the Sierra Nevada Mountains was five percent of its historical average. “The 2015 snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is unprecedented,” said author Valerie Trouet from the University of Arizona. “We expected it to be bad, but we certainly didn’t expect it to be the worst in the past 500 years.” The study relied on tree-ring data series from 1,500 centuries-old blue oaks to analyze precipitation, and therefore snowfall. The Sierra Nevada Mountains supply 33 percent of California’s water.

For more information see:

The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Nature

"Pause" in Climate Change Never Happened, Two Studies Say

On September 17, a study published in the journal Climatic Change concluded with "high statistical confidence" that a pause in global warming is not happening. This was mirrored by a September 15 study published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, which found that "there have been 6 occasions since 1970 when a 15-year trend would have failed to reach significance." The study called these were fluctuations, and did not statistically alter the warming trend. The authors of the BAMS study showed the data to 25 economists and told them it was agricultural data, in a blind expert test to remove biases. The economists all agreed there was no pause in the upward trend.

For more information see:

Washington Post, Climatic Change, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society