Warming felt more in Western U.S

An analysis of 50 studies finds that the region's temperatures are increasing faster than in the rest of the country and the planet as a whole.
By Margot Roosevelt, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 28, 2008
The American West is heating up faster than any other region of the United States, and more than the Earth as a whole, according to a new analysis of 50 scientific studies.

For the last five years, from 2003 through 2007, the global climate averaged 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer than its 20th century average.


During the same period, 11 Western states averaged 1.7 degrees warmer, the analysis reported.

The 54-page study, "Hotter and Drier: The West's Changed Climate," was released Thursday by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization -- a coalition of local governments, businesses and nonprofits. It was based largely on calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The report reveals "the growing consensus among scientists who study the West that climate change is no longer an abstraction," said Bradley H. Udall of the University of Colorado, whose work was cited in the study. "The signs are everywhere."

Carbon dioxide pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources is a major contributor to global warming. The Environmental Protection Agency is under court order to address cutting greenhouse gases, and Congress is considering legislation to curb them.

The consequences of Western temperature increases, the report said, are evident in a rash of heat waves. Montana, Idaho and Wyoming had their hottest Julys on record last summer, while Phoenix suffered 31 days above 110degrees.

Likely to accelerate

The Colorado River basin, which stretches from Wyoming to Mexico, is in the throes of a record drought. About 30 million people in fast-growing cities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and Las Vegas depend on water from the Colorado and its tributaries, which also drive the region's agricultural economy and hydroelectric industry. The river's two main reservoirs, Lake Powell and Lake Mead, are only 45% and 50% full, respectively.

Globally, warming varies according to region -- with more heating over land than over oceans. In California, with its coastal location, the study showed an increase of 1.1 degrees above the global average over the last five years. Arid interior states, including Utah, Wyoming, Arizona and Montana, experienced rises more than 2 degrees higher than in the world overall.

"Temperature rises have been much larger and more noticeable in the Western states," said Kelly T. Redmond, regional climatologist at Nevada's Desert Research Institute. "The past 10 years have been particularly warm, unlike any similar 10-year period we have seen over the past 115 years."

According to Udall, the data suggest that the trend will accelerate -- with the West warming about 1 1/2 times faster than the global average. Martin Hoerling, a NOAA meteorologist, has predicted that the West could heat up as much as 5 degrees by mid-century. In Alaska, the annual mean air temperature has risen 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit over the last three decades.

"If we don't want this problem to get really bad, we need to pass a climate bill with teeth," said Theo Spencer, a project manager at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group that funded the Rocky Mountain Climate analysis. "Western senators need to take the lead, considering what's at stake in their states."

Legislation in the works

A bill to slash greenhouse gases nationwide, sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), is expected to reach the Senate floor by June. A recent tally by the newsletter Environment & Energy Daily counted 44 votes for the bill so far.

As many as 10 Republican senators from Western states are leaning against the bill, according to the newsletter, which based its research on interviews with lawmakers, staff, industry and environmental groups.

California's two senators, Democrats Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, favor the bill.

In the absence of federal action, states are moving ahead. California is drafting rules to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by mid-century. And six other Western states -- Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington -- have joined it in a regional compact to curb the pollution blamed for global warming.

U.S. to Issue CO2 Emissions Regulations This Spring

The Bush administration will reportedly recommend new carbon dioxide emissions rules, a U.S. environmental official told Congress on Thursday.

The rules will have a direct impact on everything from cars and trucks to power plants and oil refineries.

Stephen Johnson, administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, said the agency plans to issue new rules related to the effects of the climate change as well as potential regulation of greenhouse gas emissions from stationary and mobile sources.

In the letter he sent to congressional leaders, the EPA administrator responded to a Supreme Court ruling that the agency should reconsider its 2003 refusal to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from new vehicles under the Clean Air Act.

Through his letter, Johnson tries to seek comment from industry and the public in an attempt to change course before the final regulations are issued.

The White House was accused of stalling so President Bush could end his mandate before the rules are implemented. Bush ends his second and last term at the White House in January 2009 and it’s very probable that the rules won’t take effect by then.

Although knowing the fact that the United States is the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter, the Bush administration wouldn’t allow emission limits arguing that China and India, the other world’s big greenhouse gas emitters, have done nothing of the sort.

EPA Signals Caution on Global Warming

The government made clear on Thursday it will not be rushed into deciding whether to regulate emissions linked to global warming, as the Supreme Court directed nearly a year ago.

Such action "could affect many (emission) sources beyond just cars and trucks" and needs to be examined broadly as to other impacts, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency wrote lawmakers.

Stephen Johnson said he has decided to begin the process by seeking public comment on the implications of regulating carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, on other agency rules that cover everything from power plants and factories to schools and small businesses.

That process could take months and led some of his critics to suggest he was shunting the sensitive issue to the next administration.

"This is the latest quack from a lame-duck EPA intent on running out the clock ... without doing a thing to combat global warming," said Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. He is chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

The Supreme Court said in April 2007 that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels is a pollutant subject to the Clean Air Act. The court directed the EPA to determine if CO2 emissions, linked to global warming, endanger public health and welfare.

If that is the case, the court said, the EPA must regulate the emissions.

The ruling, in a lawsuit by Massachusetts against the EPA, dealt only with pollution from cars and trucks.

Johnson said Thursday that if CO2 is found to endangered public health and welfare, the agency probably would have to curtail such emissions from other sources as well. That could affect a range of air pollution, from cement factories, refineries and power plants to cars, aircraft, schools and off-road vehicles.

"Rather than rushing to judgment on a single issue, this approach allows us to examine all the potential effects of a decision with the benefit of the public insight," Johnson wrote the leaders of the House and Senate environment committees.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, noted that Johnson has had nearly a year to respond to the court but "now, instead of action, we get more foot-dragging."

"Time is not on our side when it comes to avoiding dangerous climate change. This letter makes it clear that Mr. Johnson and the Bush administration are not on our side, either," Boxer, D-Calif., said in a statement.

Senior EPA employees have told congressional investigators in the House about a tentative finding from early December that CO2 posed a danger because of its climate impact. They said a draft regulation was distributed to the Transportation Department and the White House.

The EPA officials, in interviews with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said those findings were put on hold abruptly. Johnson has said that enacting tougher automobile mileage requirements in December meant that the issue had to be re-examined.

Johnson said a requirement for greater use of renewable fuels such as ethanol changed the landscape when it comes to CO2 regulation.

"It does not change EPA's obligation to provide a response to the Supreme Court decision," Johnson wrote Congress.

Environmentalists said Johnson's approach seemed to signal no meaningful action on climate change.

"EPA has offered a laundry list of reasons not to regulate," said Vickie Patton, a lawyer for Environmental Defense.

Frank O'Donnell, president of Clean Air Watch, an advocacy group, added, "This means any real action is going to come in the next administration."

But lawyer Chet Thompson, a former EPA deputy general counsel, said Johnson's approach was "very responsible given the numerous issues raised" and ramifications of regulating carbon dioxide.

Warming felt more in Western US

U.S. West Warming Faster Than Rest of World -Study

The U.S. West is heating up at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the world and is likely to face more drought conditions in many of its fast-growing cities, an environmental group said on Thursday.
By analyzing federal government temperature data, the Natural Resources Defense Council concluded that the average temperature in the 11-state Western region from 2003-07 was 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit (0.94 degrees Celsius) higher than the historical average of the 20th century.

The global average increase for the same period was 1.0 degrees Fahrenheit (0.55 degrees Celsius).

In the Colorado River Basin, which supplies water to big and fast-growing cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas and Denver, the average temperature rose 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.21 degrees Celsius), the U.S. group said.

Most of the river's water comes from melting snow in the mountains, and climate scientists predict hotter temperatures will reduce the snowpack and increase evaporation, the NRDC said in a statement.

"Global warming is hitting the West hard," said Theo Spencer of the NRDC. "It is already taking an economic toll on the region's tourism, recreation, skiing, hunting and fishing activities."

Study author Stephen Saunders of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization said there were signs of the economic impacts throughout the West.

"Since 2000 we have seen $2.7 billion in crop loss claims due to drought. Global warming is harming valuable commercial salmon fisheries, reducing hunting activity and revenues, and threatening shorter and less profitable seasons for ski resorts," he said.

Ice shelf collapse: What does it mean?

the collapse of a 160-square-mile portion of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica could mean many changes for wildlife at the bottom of the world.


Krill may not be the most exotic of creatures, but climate change could affect them like any other animal.

1 of 2 Most inhabitants of our planet will never get a firsthand look at a polar bear at the North Pole or a penguin at the South. But polar scientists already see changes in plants and animals from rapidly warming temperatures.

"Because of their extreme environments, they tend to be highly sensitive to temperature changes," said marine biologist James McClintock of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

"Therefore, what we see happening in the poles should be taken as warning of what may be coming elsewhere," said McClintock, who studies the physiology and ecology of aquatic and marine invertebrates in Antarctica.

According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, in the past 50 years, the western Antarctic peninsula has undergone the biggest temperature increase on Earth: up .9 degree Fahrenheit, or .5 degree Celsius, in each of the past five decades.
Although krill may never be as majestic as whales or as adorable as penguins, these small shrimp-like crustaceans in the waters of the Antarctic are crucial to the region's ecology.

And they might be among the first in the animal kingdom to have to adapt to warming temperatures. Scientists already are observing declines in polar krill populations that could be tied to a decrease in "As babies, krill live under the sea ice and graze on microalgae. With a decline in sea ice, there is less habitat for young krill," McClintock said.

But there may be a non-global-warming explanation for the decrease. Once heavily hunted, humpback whales that feed on krill have made a comeback in Antarctic waters.

So it is also possible that more whales are simply eating more of these tiny crustaceans.

Another warming ocean event that scientists are studying closely is the migration of king crabs. Marine remotely operated vehicles have captured photos of these giant crabs on the Antarctic Slope, where underwater land starts to rise up to the southernmost continent.

It's the first time in tens of millions of years that these predators have appeared that close to Antarctica.

Crabs and other marine invertebrates die when the water is too cold, because they cannot flush magnesium out of their systems. But even slightly warmer seawater allows the animal to regulate that element.

McClintock says that if these new predators keep moving, they could wipe out other Antarctic species. Snails, brittle stars, sea spiders and some marine worms have evolved without armor and other protections they would need to survive alongside the king crab.

Scientists studying Adelie penguins on Antarctica's western peninsula see that species suffering major declines. Ironically, an increase in snowfall could be among the most dangerous "warming" effects for this animal.

"In Antarctica, as the air temperature warms up, the humidity rises and the ability of snowfall to occur increases," McClintock said.

That snowfall can affect the mortality of penguin eggs.

Another possible impact of climate change in the Antarctic is acidification. Seawater has long been known to be good at absorbing carbon dioxide. But one effect of that absorption is that it turns the ocean water more acidic.

Organisms that make shells or have skeletons that are exposed to seawater, such as clams, snails and sea butterflies, could see their shells dissolve in water that is too acidic.

Plants and animals that have survived and thrived in the brutal conditions of Antarctica for millions of years have had to make plenty of adjustments.

"Wildlife will be impacted, but they are pretty adept at dealing with a topsy-turvy world," said Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Scambos first spotted the disintegration of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in February. He cautions that the poles will be the leading edge of what's happening in the rest of the world as global warming continues.

"Even though they seem far away, changes in the polar regions could have an impact on both hemispheres with sea level rise and changes in climate patterns," he said.

CEI Launches National Ad Campaign on the Impact of Al Gore’s Global Warming Policies

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has launched a national advertising campaign, focusing on the threat to affordable energy posed by Al Gore’s global warming agenda. The ads contrast Gore’s energy-consuming lifestyle with the life-and-death need for energy in developing countries.




CEI’s new campaign comes in the face of Gore’s March 1st announcement of a major new set of ads from his Alliance for Climate Protection to promote the global warming issue. CEI’s response includes both a broadcast television ad and related online video.

“Global warming activists warn us about the alleged threats from global warming, but are usually silent about the much more immediate threats from global warming policies,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman, also the ad co-creator. “Restricting access to affordable energy is a sure recipe for increasing poverty, disease and human misery around the world.”

The broadcast ad premiered this morning at a press conference at the National Press Club, and will run in markets around the country over the next two weeks, including Boston, Phoenix, Orlando and Pittsburgh. The ad will also be running in the Washington, D.C. market on cable news programs on CNN, CNBC and Fox News Channel.

CEI previously stirred international controversy in 2006 with a pair of CEI ads on global warming alarmism, which carried the tagline “CO2: They Call It Pollution; We Call It Life.”

Massive ice shelf on verge of breakup

(CNN) -- Some 220 square miles of ice has collapsed in Antarctica and an ice shelf about the size of Connecticut is "hanging by a thread," the British Antarctic Survey said Tuesday, blaming global warming.


Scientists say the size of the threatened shelf is about 5,282 square miles.

1 of 2 "We are in for a lot more events like this," said professor Ted Scambos, a glaciologist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Scambos alerted the British Antarctic Survey after he noticed part of the Wilkins ice shelf disintegrating on February 28, when he was looking at NASA satellite images.

Late February marks the end of summer at the South Pole and is the time when such events are most likely, he said.

"The amazing thing was, we saw it within hours of it beginning, in between the morning and the afternoon pictures of that day," Scambos said of the large chunk that broke away on February 28.

The Wilkins ice shelf lost about 6 percent of its surface a decade ago, the British Antarctic Survey said in a statement on its Web site

Another 220 square miles -- including the chunk that Scambos spotted -- had splintered from the ice shelf as of March 8, the group said.

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"As of mid-March, only a narrow strip of shelf ice was protecting several thousand kilometers of potential further breakup," the group said.

Scambos' center put the size of the threatened shelf at about 5,282 square miles, comparable to the state of Connecticut, or about half the area of Scotland. See a photos as the collapse progressed




Once Scambos called the British Antarctic Survey, the group sent an aircraft on a reconnaissance mission to examine the extent of the breakout.

"We flew along the main crack and observed the sheer scale of movement from the breakage," said Jim Elliott, according to the group's Web site.

"Big hefty chunks of ice, the size of small houses, look as though they've been thrown around like rubble -- it's like an explosion," he said.

"Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened," David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey said, according to the Web site.

"I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread -- we'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."

But with Antarctica's summer ending, Scambos said the "unusual show is over for this season."

Ice shelves are floating ice sheets attached to the coast. Because they are already floating, their collapse does not have any effect on sea levels, according to the Cambridge-based British Antarctic Survey.

Scambos said the ice shelf is not currently on the path of the increasingly popular tourist ships that travel from South America to Antarctica. But some plants and animals may have to adapt to the collapse.

"Wildlife will be impacted, but they are pretty adept at dealing with a topsy-turvy world," he said. "The ecosystem is pretty resilient."

Several ice shelves -- Prince Gustav Channel, Larsen Inlet, Larsen A, Larsen B, Wordie, Muller and Jones -- have collapsed in the past three decades, the British Antarctic Survey said.

Larsen B, a 1,254-square-mile ice shelf, comparable in size to the U.S. state of Rhode Island, collapsed in 2002, the group said.

Scientists say the western Antarctic peninsula -- the piece of the continent that stretches toward South America -- has warmed more than any other place on Earth over the past 50 years, rising by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit each decade.

Scambos said the poles will be the leading edge of what's happening in the rest of the world as global warming continues.

"Even though they seem far away, changes in the polar regions could have an impact on both hemispheres, with sea level rise and changes in climate patterns," he said.

News of the Wilkins ice shelf's impending breakup came less than two weeks after the United Nations Environment Program reported that the world's glaciers are melting away and that they show "record" losses.


"Data from close to 30 reference glaciers in nine mountain ranges indicate that between the years 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 the average rate of melting and thinning more than doubled," the UNEP said March 16.

The most severe glacial shrinking occurred in Europe, with Norway's Breidalblikkbrea glacier, UNEP said. That glacier thinned by about 10 feet in 2006, compared with less than a foot the year before, it said

Soot almost as bad as CO 2 for global warming

Aharply reducing the amount of "black carbon" - commonly known as soot - in the atmosphere could help slow global warming and buy precious time in the fight against climate change, new research says.

Soot produced by burning coal, diesel, wood and dung causes significantly more damage to the environment than previously thought, two US researchers have found. Black carbon could cause up to 60 per cent of the current warming effect of carbon dioxide, making it an important target for efforts to slow global warming.

Around 400,000 people are estimated to die each year due to inhaling soot particles, particularly because of indoor cooking on wood and dung stoves in developing countries. These deaths are mainly among women and children.

Greg Carmichael, of the University of Iowa, one of the authors of the study, published in Nature Geoscience, said: "Trying to develop strategies that really go after black carbon is a very good short-term strategy and a win-win strategy [from] both climate and air pollution perspectives."

Professor Carmichael and Veerabhadran Ramanathan, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, put together data from satellites, aircraft and surface instruments on the warming effect from black carbon.

They conclude that its effect in the atmosphere is around 0.9 watts per square metre, higher than the estimate of 0.2 to 0.4 watts in last year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The 8 million tonnes of soot released into the atmosphere every year have also created a number of "hot spots" around the world, contributing to rising temperatures.

The plains of south Asia along the Ganges River and continental east Asia are both such hot spots, in part because up to 35 per cent of global black carbon output comes from China and India.

Fine black soot settling on snow and ice - and thus trapping more of the sun's radiative force - have also accelerated the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and ice cover in the Arctic, two regions that have been hit especially hard by climate change in recent decades.

"A major focus on decreasing black carbon emissions offers an opportunity to mitigate the effects of global warming trends in the short term," the authors conclude.

Most particulates in the atmosphere reduce the warming effect from greenhouse gases by bouncing radiation back into space - so-called global dimming. But black carbon has the opposite effect and professors Ramanathan and Carmichael argue that its contribution to global warming has been underestimated.

The researchers say programs to replace wood-burning stoves with clean technology in developing countries should be pursued to reduce the number of deaths caused by inhaling the smoke.

The authors stress that these measures are not a magic bullet for climate change.

"It is important to emphasise that black carbon reduction can only help delay and not prevent unprecedented climate changes due to CO2 emissions,"