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Bob Berwyn, Global Warming Set the Stage for Los Angeles Fires

A new attribution analysis found that climate heating caused by burning fossil fuels significantly increased the likelihood of extreme fire conditions.

 

 

Monterey County firefighters clear shrubbery around houses in Brentwood, Calif. as the Palisades Fire grows closer on Jan. 11. Credit: Jon Putman/NurPhoto via Getty Images

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News (hyperlink to the original story), a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter.  bit.ly/40PtPci

Global warming caused mainly by burning of fossil fuels made the hot, dry and windy conditions that drove the recent deadly fires around Los Angeles about 35 times more likely to occur, an international team of scientists concluded in a rapid attribution analysis released Tuesday.

Today’s climate, heated 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 Celsius) above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average, based on a 10-year running average, also increased the overlap between flammable drought conditions and the strong Santa Ana winds that propelled the flames from vegetated open space into neighborhoods, killing at least 28 people and destroying or damaging more than 16,000 structures.

“Climate change is continuing to destroy lives and livelihoods in the U.S.” said Friederike Otto, senior climate science lecturer at Imperial College London and co-lead of World Weather Attribution, the research group that analyzed the link between global warming and the fires. Last October, a WWA analysis found global warming fingerprints on all 10 of the world’s deadliest weather disasters since 2004.

Several methods and lines of evidence used in the analysis confirm that climate change made the catastrophic LA wildfires more likely, said report co-author Theo Keeping, a wildfire researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires at Imperial College London.

“With every fraction of a degree of warming, the chance of extremely dry, easier-to-burn conditions around the city of LA gets higher and higher,” he said. “Very wet years with lush vegetation growth are increasingly likely to be followed by drought, so dry fuel for wildfires can become more abundant as the climate warms.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Park Williams, a professor of geography at the University of California and co-author of the new WWA analysis, said the real reason the fires became a disaster is because “homes have been built in areas where fast-moving, high-intensity fires are inevitable.” Climate, he noted, is making those areas more flammable.

All the pieces were in place, he said, including low rainfall, a buildup of tinder-dry vegetation and strong winds. All else being equal, he added, “warmer temperatures from climate change should cause many fuels to be drier than they would have been otherwise, and this is especially true for larger fuels such as those found in houses and yards.”

He cautioned against business as usual.

“Communities can’t build back the same because it will only be a matter of years before these burned areas are vegetated again and a high potential for fast-moving fire returns to these landscapes.”

The series of five major fires started January 7, and were mostly contained by January 28, when some rain and snow fell in the affected areas, but not before disrupting the lives of tens of thousands of people, and increasing long-term health risks to people who had to breathe the smoke from burning vegetation and urban structures.

After several days of official warnings about extreme fire conditions, and despite efforts to reduce the risk by shutting down some power lines, winds of up to 100 mph pushed flames, fire tornadoes, smoke and thick curtains of burning embers down through rugged canyons overgrown with dry grass, brush and trees in areas like Pacific Palisades, between Santa Monica and Malibu, as well as parts of Pasadena and Altadena. In most of those areas, fences, decks, landscaping and homes themselves were the fuel for what is projected to be the costliest climate-linked disaster on record in the United States.

The new attribution analysis was done by 32 researchers, including leading wildfire scientists from the U.S. and Europe as part of World Weather Attribution, which has studied the influence of climate change on more than 90 extreme events around the world. The scientists warned that the likelihood of dangerously fire-prone conditions will increase by another 35 percent if global warming reaches 4.7 degrees Fahrenheit (2.6 Celsius), as projected by 2100.

To evaluate how warming affected the fires, the researchers used a peer-reviewed method that combines observed weather data with climate models. The calculations show that many of the factors contributing to the conflagrations are intensified in a warmer climate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Low rainfall in the Southern California region from October to December is about 2.4 times more likely, and fire-prone conditions in the region last 23 days longer now than in the pre-industrial climate, the scientists said. They noted that the relatively small geographic study area added some uncertainty to the equation, especially with regard to how warming affects seasonal rainfall, which has always been quite variable and is also shaped by much larger regional drivers.

Taken together, the results all indicate climate change plays a major role and the researchers are confident in the findings that warming increases the chances of such fires.

Many Other Regions At Risk

The researchers were also able to show that the fires’ impacts disproportionately affected elderly people and people with disabilities, such as those with limited mobility, as well as population groups that received late warnings. Some of those effects, they noted, will exacerbate historical economic disparities in ways that could persist long into the future.

“The neighborhood of Altadena with a large Black population was in the path of the fires, which destroyed the major source of generational wealth for many residents who had previously faced discriminatory redlining practices,” the scientists wrote in the report.

Critical weaknesses in water infrastructure, which is “designed for routine fires rather than the extreme demands of large-scale fires, and shows the need for investments in resilient water systems and other stronger climate adaptation and emergency preparedness measures to address more frequent future wildfires.”

“This was a perfect storm of climate-enabled and weather-driven fires impacting the built environment,” said co-author John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at the University of California, Merced.

There are similar fire-prone communities in other regions, he added, including Boulder County, Colorado, where the 2021 Marshall fire destroyed more than 1,000 homes. Similar disasters have played out recently around the world, including the 2023 Lahaina fire on Maui’s northwest coast, and July 2024 fires in Viña del Mar, Chile.

Williams said the recent fires around Los Angeles don’t even come close to ranking in the top 10 for size.

There are many neighborhoods in Southern California nestled into the heavily vegetated mountainsides from Santa Barbara County through Ventura County, LA County, Orange County and San Diego County that could feasibly be next, he said.

“I’d say that a large number of neighborhoods are at similar risk to the small number of neighborhoods that we saw exposed to the fires this year,” Williams said.

 

Originally published in Inside Climate News on 28 Jan 2025

 

 

European gas imports nearly a third more polluting than previously thought

The EU is promoting LNG as a cleaner alternative to traditional shipping fuels, but new evidence on upstream emissions shows that Europe’s gas mix is a lot dirtier than EU officials thought

30% Europe’s LNG imports more polluting than thought

Europe’s LNG imports are 30% more polluting than is assumed by the EU in its green shipping law, a new study by Energy and Environmental Research Associates on behalf of T&E shows. T&E calls on the EU to revise its FuelEU Maritime law to ensure that the full impact of fossil gas is accounted for.

Fossil gas is seen as a cleaner alternative to traditional shipping fuels like heavy fuel oil, which is one of the most polluting fuels on earth. Today, there are almost 1,200 LNG-powered vessels globally with close to 1,000 on shipping companies’ order books. T&E has previously estimated that a quarter of EU shipping could run on LNG in 2030.

But, T&E’s newest study shows that LNG from major suppliers to the EU like the US, Qatar, Russia and Algeria is nearly as bad as the fuel it replaces. Even when the LNG comes from less polluting upstream countrieTranport & Enviroments like Norway and the UK, emissions reductions are limited.

 

The EU’s green shipping fuels law (FuelEU Maritime) calculates fuel emissions on a life-cycle basis, taking into account both upstream and onboard emissions. The upstream emissions from the extraction, production and transport of LNG can vary considerably depending on the fuel’s origin and the way it is produced. FuelEU Maritime does not account for these differences, instead using a standardised upstream emissions factor of 18.5 grams of CO₂ equivalent per megajoule (MJ) of energy. This makes LNG a tempting solution for shipping companies to meet sustainability targets. But T&E’s analysis shows that emissions from LNG imported to Europe are actually 30% higher than this, at 24.4gCO₂e/MJ. A single large container ship running on LNG would therefore emit an extra 2,731 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent every year.

 

Inesa Ulichina, shipping officer at T&E, said: “Fossil gas will never be sustainable and is even dirtier than previously thought. Extracting, transporting and burning methane is a leaky business. This costly pursuit is leading major shipping companies to waste billions on a solution that won’t bring them any closer to their zero-emission goals. Instead, they should focus on investing in green e-fuels production. The EU and the IMO can stop incentivising fossil gas by fully taking into account its full lifecycle emissions – from the ground to the sea.”

T&E calls on the EU to amend the emissions factors in the FuelEU Maritime law to reflect new scientific data. The regulation enters into force at the beginning of 2025 when shipowners will start accounting for their fuels. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) for its part is yet to determine the default emissions factors of different fuels including LNG.

 

Original publication “European gas imports nearly a third more polluting than previously thought,” at Transport & Environment  bit.ly/49ZbPz2

 

 

Climate Brief:  US election fallout on UN COP 29

Just days before COP29, Donald Trump won the US election on a campaign promising to roll back climate action and take the world’s biggest historical emitter out of the Paris Agreement once again.

The potential impact of his reelection on the summit’s negotiations – and multilateralism more broadly – instantly became a major focus on the global stage.

(Carbon Brief analysis earlier this year found Trump’s reelection could add 4bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, GtCO2e, to US emissions by 2030.)

Early on in the summit – before negotiations heated up – US climate envoy John Podesta held a press conference where he tried to reassure delegates that president Joe Biden’s outgoing team would continue to play their role at the talks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At the same time, senior representatives of the EU, the UK and China suggested that their countries would be willing to step into a larger climate leadership role in light of Trump’s election.

The summit’s first week saw right-wing populist leader Javier Milei withdraw Argentina’s delegation from the talks, with some interpreting this as a bid to woo Trump.

The move ignited fears that Argentina might become the first country to follow the US in leaving the Paris Agreement, with some delegates suggesting to Carbon Brief that this could start a chain reaction of far-right governments withdrawing from the global climate deal.

The Argentinian government later clarified it had no plans to leave the Paris Agreement.

As negotiations got underway, the general sense was that all parties were continuing to work together in good faith despite the uncertainty caused by the US election result, one lead negotiator told journalists at a background briefing.

Some said this demonstrated “resilience” in the COP process, whereas others pointed out that it exposed how the talks are inflexible to react to major global events.

In public, countries made a show of reaffirming their commitment to multilateralism. A call for “strengthened multilateralism” was included in a statement from the G20 released during COP and several countries referenced its importance during plenary sessions.

Despite this, Trump’s victory and its hamstringing impact on US negotiators – who are usually viewed as the “powerbrokers” of the conference – was clearly visible in some of the major negotiating tracks at COP29, negotiators and observers said.

South African environment minister Dion George, who co-chaired negotiations on mitigation along with Norway, told Politico that the US was more “subdued” in these discussions, when “normally they talk a lot”.

The New York Times reported that Saudi Arabia, known to push back on new mitigation measures, were particularly emboldened in their stance against including the fossil-fuel transition pledge agreed last year in the COP29 negotiated text.

Some observers speculated that the diminished position of the US – who reportedly helped to convince parties including Saudi Arabia to agree to the fossil-fuel pledge in Dubai – could have played a role.

Trump’s victory also had repercussions for COP29’s biggest aim of agreeing to a new climate-finance goal, others said.

The summit saw developed countries agree to give $300bn a year in climate finance to developing countries by 2035, an outcome that left many global-south nations bitterly disappointed. (See: New climate finance goal.)

Michai Robertson, lead finance negotiator for AOSIS, told Politico that Trump’s victory “changed” what the US “could have provided” – as the outgoing Biden team were in no position to commit to an uptick in spending.

A European diplomat added that the looming arrival of the Trump administration made it “more important” for developing countries to agree to a climate-finance deal at COP29, telling Politico:

“The developing countries [were] saying that it is better to have no agreement than a bad one…Normally, that is true, but, in this case, with the upcoming presidency in the US, it should be crucial for them to have an agreement now.”

However, Dr Leon Sealey-Huggins, a senior campaigner at the charity War on Want, said that the “threat of the Trump presidency [was] being used” to try to convince developing nations to agree to a finance deal, exposing shortcomings in developed nations’ approach to  multilateralism. He told Carbon Brief:

“People [were] saying: ‘Well, you better take this money, because when Trump comes, you’re not going to get any money’. And I think that’s a damning indictment of the failure of the political systems in the global north to appreciate that you can’t have a global climate response without global climate justice.”

Moving forward, it is clear that Trump’s victory will continue to affect climate negotiations, observers said – with his administration set to be in place for COP30 in Brazil, a summit being billed as a major moment for increasing global efforts to cut emissions.

Is the weather running AMOC in Ireland

Part 2

In the March 1, 2024 issue of the ieBLOG section of www.irishenvironment.com we wrote about the nature and, and to  a limited extent, the impacts of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).  In this issue (November 2024) we explore that issue further through the talk by Stefan Rahmstorf of the Earth system analysis department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany on the the workings and risks from the AMOC.  We also republish an Open Letter by Climate Scientists to the Nordic Council of Ministers, calling for the closer attention of the Council and others to the serious risks of major ocean circulation change in the Atlantic. In his talk Professor Rahmstorf mentions in passing that Ireland and Scotland will experience changes to their weather and environment.

In a recent interview, Rahmstorf explores some of the likely outcomes in Ireland and Scotland, and Europe in general, if the AMOC continues to weaken or even collapses, sooner rather than later.  Below are excerpts of that discussion:

 

BT [Ben Turner]: So what would climates around the North Atlantic look like if AMOC were to collapse? What regions would be the worst affected?

SR [Stefan Rahmstorf]: There would be many impacts. The most immediate one that people probably already know about is the cooling around the northern Atlantic, which is already there in the form of the cold blob. It’s also in the air temperature around that region, it’s the only part of the world that has not warmed, but has been getting colder, in the last 100 years.

So we already have the symptom there, but when the AMOC really gets much weaker still and collapses, then the cold blob would expand and cover land areas as well — like Ireland, Scotland, Scandinavia, Iceland, they would likely get several degrees colder and also drier.

That would then enhance the temperature contrast across Europe, because Southern Europe would still be warm and Northern Europe would be cool. These temperature differences drive extreme weather events, bringing a lot more variability and storms. The sea level would also rise by up to half a meter [1.6 feet] in the northern Atlantic in addition to the global average rise that is happening anyway.

There would also be an effect on ocean carbon dioxide uptake. Currently, the ocean takes up 25% of our CO2 emissions just by gas exchange at the sea surface. The ocean can do that because a lot of that CO2 is then transported to the deep ocean by the AMOC. If the overturning circulation stops, that CO2 will stay near the surface and quickly equilibrate with the atmosphere. That would make it [C02 concentrations] rise faster in the atmosphere.

The AMOC also transports oxygen into the deep ocean. This is also bad news [if this process stops], because if you get an oxygen-depleted ocean it would disrupt the entire web of life in the northern Atlantic, and that would disrupt fisheries.

A map of the ocean currents in the Atlantic. (Image credit: Peter Hermes Furian via Shutterstock)

  

BT: That paints a very strange picture of our future climate — things being colder around the northern Atlantic, warmer to the south, and there being a lot more CO2 in the atmosphere. What impacts will that combination have globally?

SR: We’d see the whole Northern Hemisphere cool compared to what it would be with just global warming [acting alone]. Although it wouldn’t exactly cool [outright], climate change would counteract that effect in most places, except around the North Atlantic.

In the Southern Hemisphere, greenhouse warming would get worse. There would be a shift in the tropical rainfall belts. We know from paleoclimate records that these Heinrich events, for example, have caused major drought problems in parts around the tropics and in other areas. You would also get flooding from tropical rainfalls shifting to places where people and infrastructure are not used to it.

In terms of more detail, there are surprisingly few studies on that so far. We mostly know from paleoclimate data how drastic and worldwide these changes are, even reaching as far as New Zealand, which is as removed from the North Atlantic as you can possibly get.

 

From Ben Turner, ‘We don’t really consider it low probability anymore’: Collapse of key Atlantic current could have catastrophic impacts, says oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf,” Live Science bit.ly/40peSxI

See also, Guidance for Met Éireann forecasters on impact for Ireland from possible collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).   https://bit.ly/40n62k0

The Growth of Agricultural Litigation

 

 

 

What do Lake Vico in Italy, the pesticides authorisation process in France, and the river Ems in Germany all have in common? They are all linked to industrial agriculture, the impact of which has been the subject of recent court cases across the European Union. Laura Hildt explores the role of litigation in shaping a brighter EU food and farming system. 

In courts across the EU, governments are increasingly found in breach of their obligations to ensure clean and healthy water, proper risk assessments of pesticides, stable habitats and adequate greenhouse gas emission reductions. While these cases highlight local issues, they are part of a broader picture of litigation which showcases the systemic problems with the EU’s approach to agriculture.

The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) – Europe’s dedicated farming budget – is not working for farmers or the environment. Countless reports, studies and recent protests have demonstrated that beyond doubt. In fact, by looking at what is happening in the courts, we see that the CAP – by funding business as usual – funds a system that is leading EU governments to breach the law.

The CAP on paper 

On paper – or rather, in law – the CAP has multiple objectives, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, halting biodiversity loss and effectively managing natural resources such as water, soil and air. It is, after all, a third of the EU’s budget.

When national governments implement the CAP, they must show how their plans to spend CAP money at national level achieve those objectives, including long-standing environmental obligations. Makes sense to not give out vast amounts of public money in a way that pollutes drinking water and makes governments fail their legal obligations to ensure that same water is safe and clean. Right? And yet, that is what is happening with the CAP.

The reality 

Governments are spending public money on a system that leads them to breach the law – which results in them spending even more of the public’s money to clean up the mess. More and more courts across Europe are finding governments in breach of the Nitrates Directive, the Water Framework Directive, the Habitats Directive and even their climate obligations. All fuelled by the continued funding of intensive agricultural practices such as the excessive spreading of manure on our soils, heavy pesticides use and industrial-scale animal rearing.

Taking action 

Who wins in this? Well, no one really. Except, those with vested interests, like Big Agri and the 20% of industrial ‘farms’ which receive 80% of the CAP budget. They make short-term profits by clinging on to the status quo, at the expense of the public – who pays the price to clean up the mess afterwards. Farmers themselves are amongst the first to be hit by the impacts of the climate, biodiversity and pollution crises – which is why they too are turning to the courts. Hugues is a Belgian farmer who is suing TotalEnergies for its contribution to the climate crisis and the impact it is having on his farm and his livelihood. Extreme weather events, such as heat waves, droughts and extreme rainfall have harmed his crops, his ability to feed his animals, and his income and workload. This has pushed Hugues to take action by turning to the courts to seek an order that TotalEnergies, one of the most-polluting companies in the world, repairs the damage inflicted and to phases out fossil fuels to prevent further damage. And this is far from the only example.

Over at Lake Vico in Italy, the surrounding area around the lake is covered with intensive hazelnut plantations that are subjected to large amounts of pesticides and fertilisers, which ultimately run-off the land into the lake. The result: the local inhabitant’s water supply has become undrinkable due to eutrophication (excessive plant growth due to nutrient run off, in this case red algal blooms which release toxins) and overall degradation of a protected habitat. Following action from ClientEarth and Lipu (BirdLife Italy), Italy’s court ordered the region to take appropriate measures to fix the situation.

A similar case exists for the Ems river, located in a region at the centre of meat production in Germany. To protect drinking water sources, EU law establishes a 50 mg/l limit of nitrates in groundwater. In the Ems region this figure is dramatically exceeded, and many even call for the limit to be lowered  to protect human health. German NGO, Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH) took to court, which ruled in their favour and ordered the regions of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia to take effective measures to reach the limit value of 50 mg/l in all Ems ground water bodies as quickly as possible, and to reverse the harm done.

An essential tool 

It should not require going to court to get safe drinking water, healthy ecosystems and agricultural climate targets that align with international, EU and national legal obligations and the science. Yet, it seems like these cases are necessary, particularly while there is a broken CAP that continues to lock our agricultural system into paying to pollute rather than making the polluters pay.

That is why we are gathering cases related to agriculture, like that of Hugues, Lake Vico and the river Ems, to demonstrate the systemic failures that sit behind these local problems, as illustrated in each court case. With more and more courts finding governments to be in breach of their long-standing obligations, the pressure is rising to move away from this woefully failing CAP and toward a brighter future of EU food and farming.

Originally published at Laura Hildt “Legal ground: the growth of agriculture litigation,” in META European Environmental Bureau (25