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CLIMATE SCIENCE
Historic carbon peak soon to become global average: WMO
by Staff Writers
Geneva (AFP) May 14, 2013


Online climate 'game' can help address greenhouse gas sources
Phoenix (UPI) May 14, 2013 - An online "game" could engage citizen scientists to help improve knowledge of the sources of greenhouse gases, Arizona State University scientists say.

The online effort on a website called Ventus (Latin for wind) has a simple interface in which users enter basic information that will help climate scientists locate all the power plants around the world and quantify their carbon dioxide emissions, a university release said Wednesday.

ASU researchers estimate there are as many as 30,000 power plants around the world burning fossil fuels. While a list of those facilities does exist, scientifically accurate information needed to map each power plant's location and carbon dioxide emissions does not.

"Of all the fossil fuel CO2 emissions in the world, power plants account for almost half -- so a pretty big portion of the climate change problem is due to the production of electricity everywhere in the world," climate scientist Kevin Gurney said.

"While you might imagine that we would know where they are and how much they're emitting, it turns out we don't. With the growth in countries such as China, India and Brazil, this lack of information poses challenges for both basic science and climate change solutions."

Ventus participants who know the amount of CO2 emissions from a specific power plant have valuable information to contribute, the researchers said, and often can provide three other pieces of vital information: the location of the facility (within a few hundred yards,) the fuel used and the amount of electricity produced.

"Ventus uses a Google Earth map which allows someone playing the game to drop pins on the power plants," said Darragh O'Keefe, the ASU research scientist who built the website. "Our logic is that for every power plant in the world, there are probably at least a dozen people who live near it, work at it, or know someone who works at it.

"With the proliferation of phones and GPS, it makes it pretty easy to locate things."

After seeing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere surpass a historic threshold last week, the world should brace for the new peak level to soon become the global annual average, the World Meteorological Organization warned Tuesday.

"At the current rate of increase, the global annual average CO2 concentration is set to cross the 400 parts per million threshold in 2015 or 2016," the UN agency said in a statement.

Climate scientists last week measured 400.03 parts per million of CO2 at a Hawaii station considered the global benchmark site for atmospheric observations -- marking the first time in human history that the level has clearly surpassed the symbolic 400 ppm threshold.

This level has not existed on Earth in three to five million years -- a time when temperatures were several degrees warmer and the sea level was 20 to 40 meters (22 to 44 yards) higher than today, experts say.

Several other stations in the Arctic and on the Canary Islands have over the past year also reported daily mean values exceeding the 400 ppm mark, but the benchmark Hawaii measurement sparked particular alarm, with the UN's climate chief Christiana Figueres warning Monday the world had "entered a new danger zone".

Before the industrial revolution, when man first started pumping carbon into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, CO2 levels were about 280 ppm -- rising steadily since records began in the 1950s.

The WMO pointed out Tuesday that the average annual amount of CO2 in the atmosphere reached 390.9 ppm in 2011, or 140 percent above the "balanced" pre-industrial level, and stressed there had been an average increase of 2.0 ppm each year for the past decade.

The 400 ppm symbolic threshold had been expected to be breached for some time, but campaigners say it should nevertheless serve as a wake-up call in efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and thus global warming.

The UN is targeting a maximum temperature rise of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) on pre-industrial levels for what scientists believe would be manageable climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which informs policy makers, has said atmospheric CO2 must be limited to 400 ppm for a temperature rise of 2-2.4 degrees Celsius (3.6 and 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit).

Many scientists however believe we are heading towards warming levels of between 3.0 and 4.0 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

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Beijing (UPI) May 13, 2013
Urbanization in eastern China has a significant impact on the observed surface warming that plays an essential role in regional climate change, scientists say. Intensive urbanization in China since the 1980s has not only altered surface vegetation distribution but has also affected surface energy and water balance, research leader Yang XiuQun of the School of Atmospheric Sciences at Nan ... read more


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