Sustainable Consumption: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

Greener World Media, PlanetArk 12 Jan 10;

With climate negotiations reaching an inconclusive end in Copenhagen, the action swings back from national governments and the intergovernmental process to you and me.

For many years, the idea of sustainable consumption has been embraced by NGOs and others, but widely shunned by business.

This is changing fast. Not only that, the signs of growing interest are coming from unlikely locations.

In Bentonville, Ark., last summer, new Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke called on his company to "develop the tools to help enable sustainable consumption." Who would have guessed that the chief executive of the world's largest retailer, which sells US$400 billion of goods each year, would say that?

Recently in Dubai (just before the recent bond crisis struck the Emirate), under the auspices of the World Economic Forum, I chaired a Global Agenda Council on this subject. A dozen experts from business, academia and NGOs from the United States, the U.K., Brazil, Germany and elsewhere were asked to deliver recommendations on how to shift to more sustainable consumption patterns. We developed three priority recommendations: Mobilize and inspire consumers, explore new business models, and create innovative public policy. The topic will be on the agenda again at the WEF's annual meeting in Davos this month.

Why has this issue come out of the shadows now? After all, the UN has been working on this issue for almost a decade, through the Marrakech Process, which aims to develop guidelines for production and consumption.

The answer may well lie in the pre-recession events of 2008. Before the financial crisis hit late last year, we experienced a mash-up of food/fuel/water-security problems. All the graphs and charts that predicted a disconnect between the supply and demand of basic commodities came to life in the form of shortages and price shocks in the months before Lehman Brothers collapsed. This meant higher prices for companies, and higher prices for consumers, who saw their food and energy bills rise.

And while the recession has brought a temporary pause to all this, the long-term trends suggest that the question of whether existing business models can-literally-be sustained is squarely on the table. To address the coming consumption crunch, new products, services and production processes are needed.

The keys to progress rest in the same formula I discussed in my recent e-blast about climate change: Innovation, efficiency, mobilization and collaboration.

The need to develop new consumption patterns is the mother of all innovation challenges. The race to dematerialize is on. Some of this will come from the digital revolution, as newspapers can now be delivered wirelessly to e-readers instead of plopping dead trees on the doorstep. But some of the innovation will come from redesigning business models. Electronics retail leader Best Buy is looking to enter the transportation business. Through its emerging business unit, the company is experimenting with electronic transportation devices like "e-bikes," building a mobility business to capitalize on its expertise selling and servicing very different kinds of consumer devices. One well-known beverage maker is looking at selling packets of soluble powder to avoid the need to ship water and containers around the globe.
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Efficiency holds additional promise. That is why the zero-waste movement is gaining steam, with the New York Times proclaiming in November that it has moved from the fringes to the mainstream. Companies including Nestlé, Wal-Mart, and Honda are taking aim at garbage by revamping production and distribution processes. Cities across the United States, which maintains the crown as the world's biggest per capita garbage producer, have set targets of zero waste by 2020.

The holy grail, however, may come in mobilizing-and inspiring-consumers. This is the only way to develop markets that de-emphasize natural resource use, which in turn will create rewards for companies that make the shift. SAP, Siemens, and Coca-Cola are the founding partners of www.Hopenhagen.org, an effort to build a global consensus for strong action on climate change at the recently closed summit. Coca-Cola, in addition to experimenting with plant-based bottles, has invested in RecycleBank, a start-up that rewards consumers for recycling products.

Collaboration is the only way to get this done. New business models will mean new partnerships. Google and GE have gotten immense attention for their initial efforts to create smart energy grids. Shai Agassi's Better Place, a potentially disruptive force in private transportation, is partnering with auto incumbents Renault and Nissan, as well as the governments of Israel and Denmark, to build the needed infrastructure for an electric vehicle network. Ford and AT&T are working together on low-emission vehicles. These unlikely partners are looking across established industry lines to innovate.

Strangely enough for an idea that hinges on less consumption, progress may rest on marketing. After all, "sustainable consumption" is one of those "eat your spinach" phrases that hardly inspire people, and that's a problem.

In fact, this is an idea that can be very exciting-maybe even sexy. After all, it may be that a resource crunch is the spark that catalyzes innovative ways to meet human needs-for all 7 billion of us. And that's a lot more exciting than a plate of spinach.

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Germany Sticking To Ambitious CO2 Target: Adviser

Erik Kirschbaum, PlanetArk 12 Jan 10;

BERLIN - Germany will stick to a more ambitious goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 even though the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen fell short of expectations, a government adviser said on Monday.

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, head of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said it was unclear if the European Union as a whole would pursue a 30 percent target when it submits its plan to the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat by January 31.

Germany had hoped that its offer to raise its 2020 target from 30 to 40 percent, combined with an EU offer to raise its goal from 20 to 30 percent if other nations pledged substantial cuts, would spur a deal on worldwide reductions in Copenhagen.

The Copenhagen accord set a goal of limiting global warming to a maximum 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times. But it failed to say how this would be achieved.

"Germany has a firm target that the government has even spelled out in its coalition agreement to cut its emissions by 40 percent," Schellnhuber told a news conference. "That's unconditional. Germany will continue to be a driving force."

Germany is the world's sixth largest emitter. Some industry groups have urged Berlin to drop ambitious emissions targets, saying they could jeopardise jobs. Germany has created hundreds of thousands of green tech jobs in the last decade.

Schellnhuber said it was hard to tell how the EU would react to the bare-minimum Copenhagen result in which delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China and emerging powers that fell far short of the conference's original goals.

"But if others hesitate, Germany will have the chance to make its economy more fit for the future," said the adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the EU on climate change.

Schellnhuber, whose PIK institute calculated the Copenhagen accord will lead to a 3.5-degree rise in global temperatures, said he was optimistic the process would move forward in 2010.

An interim conference in June in Bonn could make progress and create momentum for a U.N. agreement in Mexico in November.

"The game isn't over yet," Schellnhuber said. "The dice haven't fallen yet. We still have the chance in the multilateral system to reach a worthwhile agreement."

At another climate meeting in Berlin on Monday, Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the U.N. Environment Program, said the failure to reach a deal in Copenhagen would cost economies around the world billions of dollars.

"Copenhagen was a setback. There was no deal. But maybe we can use the shock from that to overcome the hurdles in front of us," he said.

(Editing by Paul Taylor)

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Can the World's Telecoms Slash Their Energy Consumption 1,000-Fold?

Tech companies, government agencies and academics are uniting to develop the technology needed to increase global telecommunications networks' energy efficiency
Larry Greenemeier, Scientific American 11 Jan 10;

The unbridled success of wireless networks for Internet access and beyond has brought mobile telecommunications to remote areas of Africa, safety to many a driver stranded roadside, and worldwide mobility to professionals who were once deskbound.

Yet all of this has come at a steep environmental cost: The global network and technology required to run it produce 250 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually, roughly the same as is produced yearly by 50 million automobiles (20 percent of all the autos in the U.S.), according to Green Touch, a new international consortium of businesses, government agencies and academics formed to address this problem.

The consortium's response, announced Monday during a press conference in London, is for its members to develop the technology needed to make global telecommunications networks run 1,000 times more energy efficiently. A 1,000-fold reduction in energy use is roughly equivalent to being able to power the world's communications networks, including the Internet, for three years using the same amount of energy that it currently takes to run them for a single day, according to Gee Rittenhouse, vice president of research at Bell Labs, the Murray Hill, N.J.–based research and development arm of Alcatel–Lucent.

It would take a forest the size of the U.K. to absorb 250 million tons of CO2, Rittenhouse said, adding, "That's a lot of carbon dioxide. And you know what? It's growing."

The initial priorities of Green Touch—which includes Bell Labs, Stanford University's Wireless Systems Lab (WSL), Freescale Semiconductor, Inc., and 12 other members—are to develop a road map to meet its five-year goal of demonstrating new energy-efficient networking technologies and to create a reference architecture for all members to follow to assure that these new technologies work together. "The technologies needed to cut emissions have yet to be invented," Rittenhouse said. "With today's technology, at the very best, we can hold (CO2 emissions) constant."

Driven by increasing Internet traffic, telecom networks have scaled rapidly over the past decade to accommodate growth without creating new ways to address energy efficiency, Rittenhouse said. This growth has called for more computers to run the software that new handsets and Web sites require. Now, the challenge is to improve energy efficiency while also providing a consistent level of services as telecoms continue to expand.

Much of networks' inefficiencies today come from wireless, because its signals are not broadcast toward anyone in particular (unlike traditional wired broadband signals). Last year, Bell Labs researchers turned their attention to this problem and set out to calculate the minimum amount of energy required to power today's global networks.

The researchers found that networks could consume 10,000 times less energy than they use today and still function properly. "Of course this is a theoretical result," Rittenhouse said, "but a factor of 10,000 is remarkable." He added it would be "impractical" to try to reduce energy use by a factor of 10,000, but noted that the researchers determined that the technology needed to reduce energy use by a factor of 1,000 could be developed within the next five years if the networking industry (including carriers, equipment-makers and software writers) could find the right approach.

"We need from time to time to take a totally different approach rather than making incremental change," said Bell Labs President Jeong Kim, adding, "This is a wake-up call."

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India can be solar power leader: PM

Yahoo News 11 Jan 10;

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid out ambitious plans to make his country a global leader in solar power on Monday as he launched a government initiative to boost use of the technology.

Solar can help secure India's energy independence and tackle climate change, Singh said, as well as offering new opportunities for industry in a country with a crippling shortage of power.

The National Solar Mission, launched Monday, could "establish India as a global leader in solar energy" in the areas of power generation and technology production, Singh told business leaders and government officials.

"The rapid spread of solar lighting systems, solar water pumps and other solar power-based rural applications can change the face of our rural energy sector," he said.

The Solar Mission has the goal of increasing solar energy capacity exponentially to reach 20,000 megawatts for the year 2022, reducing reliance on fossil fuels.

That amount would provide enough power for 20 million homes, with each receiving one kilowatt of power.

Government figures show approximately 80,000 impoverished Indian villages have no access to grid electricity.

India currently produces just under nine megawatts of solar power, data from the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) showed in October.

The prime minister said India boasted some of the world's greatest science and techology minds and they had revolutionised atomic energy, space and information technology.

"I am convinced that solar energy can be the next scientific and industrial frontier in India," he said.

Indian companies which could benefit from the push include Tata BP solar, which is a joint venture between Tata Power and BP Solar and one of India's leading solar energy distributors.

India produces more than 15,000 megawatts of power from all renewable sources, according to the MNRE, with more than 10,000 megawatts from wind power alone.

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Science must end climate confusion

Richard Betts, BBC Green Room 11 Jan 10;

Climate scientists need to take more responsibility about how their work is presented to the public, suggests the Met Office's Richard Betts. In this week's Green Room, he says it is vital to prevent climate science being misunderstood or misused.

Recently, I gave a talk on climate change in my local village hall in Devon, and not surprisingly I was given a hard time.

In fact, it started two days before that. Cut off from work by the snow (which, incidentally, had been forecast with almost pinpoint accuracy), I was out with the kids and being teased by the other dads.

"Where's all this global warming you're always on about, ha ha!"

The usual stuff, leading to the usual somewhat nerdy discussion on the difference between weather and climate, which was then cut short when one of the children crashed their sledge and asked if we had got that on video to send to a TV show such as You've Been Framed.

Of course, we are seeing the same comments in some parts of the press and on Twitter, from those who jump on any bit of cold weather to say it proves that global warming is not happening and we're all a bunch of idiots (or worse).

No matter how many times we say that "global warming" means a rise of average temperature across the world, decade by decade, and not every year being consistently warmer than the last in every place on Earth, there are still those that get this mixed up.

Warming world

Yes, we have had the coldest December in the UK for 14 years and now we are having a big freeze in early January; but the UK covers less than half of one thousandth of the Earth's surface.

Last year was actually the fifth warmest year on record as far as global temperatures were concerned.

The four warmest years were, in ascending order, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 1998. The last decade was the warmest on record, followed by the 1990s and then the 1980s, so the world is definitely warming up.

To be fair, people often make the same mistake but in the other direction, and link every heatwave, major flood, drought and famine to global warming.

Of course, we know that these things happen anyway, even without climate change - they may happen more often under a warmer climate, but it is wrong to blame climate change for every single event.

Climate scientists know this, but still there are people outside of climate science who will claim or imply such things if it helps make the news or generate support for their political or business agenda.

Mixed messages

Climate "sceptics" accuse climate scientists of exaggerating the evidence for human-caused climate change in order to secure their own funding; but actually I think that any vested interests in talking up the problem lie elsewhere.

The focus on climate change is now so huge that everybody seems to need to have some link to climate change if they are to attract attention and funding.

Hence the increasing tendency to link everything to climate change - whether scientifically proven or not.

The question is: do climate scientists do enough to counter this? Or are we guilty of turning a blind eye to these things because we think they are on "our side" against the climate sceptics?

It's easy to blame the media and I don't intend to make generalisations here, but I have quite literally had journalists phone me up during an unusually warm spell of weather and ask "is this a result of global warming?"

When I say "no, not really, it is just weather", they've thanked me very much and then phoned somebody else, and kept trying until they got someone to say yes it was.

Talking up of the problem then gives easy ammunition to those who wish to discredit the science.

They do not care whether the wrong information came from the scientists or from a second-hand source, they just say (quite rightly) that it's wrong and therefore why should they trust other parts of the science?

Climate scientists need to take more responsibility for the communication of their work to avoid this kind of thing.

Even if scientists themselves are not blaming everything on climate change, it still reflects badly on us if others do this.

We cannot simply say it is everyone else's fault; we need to be very clear about what can be used as evidence for or against climate change.

Long-term, large-scale trends and the overall statistics of extreme weather events can and should be part of this evidence base. Individual weather events, from heatwaves to big freezes, cannot be used either to prove or disprove climate change.

If we do not help the media, NGOs and the public to understand this, we have done nothing to stop them getting it wrong.

If our science is misunderstood and misused, and then turned against us, it really will be a case of We've Been Framed.

Dr Richard Betts is head of climate impacts at the Met Office Hadley Centre

The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics running weekly on the BBC News website

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Next 40 years key for climate change: study

Yahoo News 12 Jan 10;

WASHINGTON (AFP) – World leaders should focus on reducing greenhouse gas emissions as much as possible over the next 40 years to avoid perilous warming conditions, researchers said Monday.

In the first study of its kind, analysts used a detailed energy system model to analyze the relationship between emissions levels in 2050 and chances of achieving end-of-century targets of two or three degrees Celsius (3.5 or 5.5 Fahrenheit) above the pre-industrial average.

UN climate talks in Copenhagen ended last month with a non-binding agreement to limit warming to two degrees Celsius but did not set binding targets to reduce the emissions of gases that scientists say are heating up the world's atmosphere to dangerous levels.

The study identified critical 2050 reductions that, if not met, could seriously complicate end-of-century targets with current energy sources.

Under one scenario, global emissions would need to be reduced by around 20 percent below 2000 levels by 2050 in order to meet the target.

A second case accounting for a more rapid increase in demand for land and energy would require far steeper 2050 reductions: 50 percent.

But the authors concluded that achieving these reductions was "barely feasible" with known energy sources.

"Even if we do everything possible to reduce emissions between now and 2050, we'd only have even odds of hitting the two-degree target -- and then only if we also did everything possible over the second half of the century too," said co-author Keywan Riahi, a researcher at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria.

Lead co-author Brian O'Neill of the National Center for Atmospheric Research noted that so long as an effective long-term strategy is adopted, emissions could be higher in 2050 than levels included in some proposals but still achieve the two-degree Celsius goal in the long term.

"Setting mid-century targets can help preserve long-term policy options while managing the risks and costs that come with long-term goals," he said.

"Even if you agree on a long-term goal, without limiting emissions sufficiently over the next several decades, you may find you're unable to achieve it. There's a risk that potentially desirable options will no longer be technologically feasible, or will be prohibitively expensive to achieve."

The study, conducted with researchers from IIASA and the Energy Research Center of the Netherlands, was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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The resurgence of El Niño means that 2010 could yet be the hottest year on record

Despite the big freeze Britain's climate is getting distinctly warmer – and we may feel it this summer
Robin McKie, The Observer 10 Jan 10;

It may be a hard notion to accept after a week that has seen the nation paralysed by snow and ice. Nevertheless, meteorologists are adamant that our world is still getting warmer. Indeed, many now believe that 2010 may turn out to be the hottest year on record.

Britain may be shivering, the Met Office may have issued emergency weather warnings for the entire country and hundreds of trains and flights may have been cancelled, but our future is destined to be a hot and sticky one. And we are likely to feel the consequences sooner rather than later.

It is a point stressed by Doug Smith, a climate expert at the Met Office. "The hottest year on record was 1998 and some people have argued that if global warming is really taking place, we should have had an even warmer year since then. We haven't, I admit. And yes, the weather is absolutely terrible at present. However, I am sure things will change – and we won't have to wait long either."

Smith and other meteorologists say that for the past few years, temperatures have been prevented from soaring even higher than they did in 1998 thanks to one key factor: the El Niño warming of the Pacific. This phenomenon occurs at irregular intervals of between two and seven years and can last for months, pumping vast amounts of heat into the atmosphere. A strong El Niño occurred in 1998 and played a key role in heating the world to a record-breaking level. (El Niño is Spanish for "the boy", a reference to the birth of Christ, which relates to the fact that this warming period typically begins around Christmas.)

In recent years, however, the Pacific has cooled thanks to a corresponding ocean phenomenon, known as La Niña (Spanish for "the girl"). It depresses sea surface temperatures and has played a key role in limiting global warming since the turn of the century. As a result, global temperatures have been prevented from rising above their 1998 record level. That cooling has now stopped, however, and a new El Niño warming period has just started in the Pacific.

"If that keeps up for the next few months, it will result in a great deal of heat being pumped into the atmosphere," added Smith. "The signs are that it will. If so, our computer models indicate that this year is more likely than not to be the hottest on record. Even if it isn't, I am quite sure a record breaker will still occur in the next few years."

The headlines then will look very different from the "Britain in deep freeze" variety that have appeared over the past few days, though we should note a key caveat here. Soaring global temperatures do not guarantee hot weather for Britain. We may still get a poor summer, but that does not mean the world is not continuing to heat up, a point ignored by most climate-change deniers.

In fact, there is a world of difference between the British weather at any given time and the inexorable shift that is taking place in the climate of the planet, as Peter Inness, a Reading University meteorologist, makes clear. "Britain covers only a very small part of the globe. It takes up less than one thousandth of the world's surface. The temperature here is almost irrelevant when considering the issue of global climate change."

It is a point that should be kept in mind as councils struggle to grit roads, cars and vans slither on the ice, exams are disrupted, and farmers battle to get food to their animals. Yes, we are feeling the cold but many other parts of the world are having no such problem, as Richard Betts, head of climate impact at the Met Office, argues.

"It is true that Britain is having a spell of extremely cold weather, as is much of northern Europe and the United States. But at the same time, Canada and the Mediterranean region are having unusually warm weather for the time of year. We shouldn't get so absorbed with what is going on in our backyard."

This argument is also made by Inness – though rather more forcibly. "I think it is really stupid to say that the current cold weather proves that climate change is not happening. Climate refers to changes in the weather patterns over a 20- to 40-year period. What is happening in Britain at present represents little more than a point on a graph."

This takes us to the heart of the matter. Meteorologists may make errors with specific long-range forecasts. (This winter was more likely to be mild than severe, they thought.) There is no doubt about the overall trend. Each year, humanity pumps billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The inevitable result will be global warming and major, catastrophic climate change.

It is a bit like playing Pooh sticks, says Betts. "When you throw sticks off a bridge, you know they will all be swept downstream. You just don't know which one will move the fastest. It is the same with climate and the weather. We know the world is warming inexorably but we cannot say specifically which year is going to be the warmest. We can only indicate what are the general prospects of getting a record-breaking year. And despite the horrible weather at present, it is quite possible that we will get one this year."

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Sea Icy Off Part Of Antarctica Despite Fear Of Melt

Reuters PlanetArk 12 Jan 10;

OSLO - Sea water under an East Antarctic ice shelf showed no sign of higher temperatures despite fears of a thaw linked to global warming that could bring higher world ocean levels, first tests showed on Monday.

Sensors lowered through three holes drilled in the Fimbul Ice Shelf showed the sea water is still around freezing and not at higher temperatures widely blamed for the break-up of 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, the most northerly part of the frozen continent.

"The water under the ice shelf is very close to the freezing point," Ole Anders Noest of the Norwegian Polar Institute wrote in a statement after drilling through the Fimbul, which is between 250 meters and 400 meters (820-1,310 ft) thick.

"This situation seems to be stable, suggesting that the melting under the ice shelf does not increase," he wrote of the first drilling cores.

The findings, a rare bit of good news after worrying signs in recent years of polar warming, adds a small bit to a puzzle about how Antarctica is responding to climate change, blamed largely on human use of fossil fuels.

Antarctica holds enough water to raise world sea levels by 57 meters (187 ft) if it ever all melted, so even tiny changes are a risk for low-lying coasts or cities from Beijing to New York.

The Institute said the water under the Fimbul was about -2.05 Celsius (28.31 Fahrenheit) -- salty water freezes at a slightly lower temperature than fresh water.

And it was slightly icier than estimates in a regional computer model for Antarctica, said Nalan Koc, head of the Norwegian Polar Institute's Center for Ice, Climate and Ecosystems.

"The important thing is that we are now in a position to monitor the water beneath the ice shelf," she told Reuters. "If there is a warming in future we can tell."

She said data collected could go into a new report by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, due in 2013-14. The last IPCC report, in 2007, did not include models for sea temperature around the Fimbul Ice Shelf.

Experts have generally raised estimates for sea level rise -- the United Nations spoke in late 2009 of a maximum 2 meter rise by 2100, up from 18-59 cms estimated by the IPCC in 2007 that excluded any possible acceleration from Antarctica.

The break-up of ice shelves does not in itself contribute to raise sea levels since the ice is already floating. The risk is that pent-up glaciers on land will flow faster toward the ocean if the shelves are removed.

Last month, most nations agreed at a Copenhagen climate summit to limit any rise in world temperatures to below 2 Celsius above pre-industrial times. But they failed to set cuts in greenhouse gas emissions needed to achieve the goal.

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Big freeze could signal global warming 'pause'

The Arctic conditions which have brought Britain to a standstill over the past week could be the start of a "pause" in global warming, some scientists believe.
The Telegraph 11 Jan 10;

The world could be in for a spell of cooler temperatures, rather than hotter conditions, as a result of cyclical changes in ocean currents for the next 20 or 30 years, it is predicted.

Research by Professor Mojib Latif, one of the world's leading climate modellers, questions the widely held view that global temperatures will rise rapidly over the coming years.

But Prof Latif, of the Leibniz Institute at Germany's Kiel University and an author for the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), believes that the cool spell will only be a temporary interruption to climate change.

He told a UN conference in September that changes in ocean currents known as North Atlantic Oscillation could dominate over man-made global warming for the next few decades.

Controversially, he also said that the fluctuations could also be responsible for much of the rise in global temperatures seen over the past 30 years.

Prof Latif told one newspaper at the weekend: "A significant share of the warming we saw from 1980 to 2000 and at earlier periods in the 20th Century was due to these cycles – perhaps as much as 50 per cent.

"They have now gone into reverse, so winters like this one will become much more likely.

"Summers will also probably be cooler, and all this may well last two decades or longer.

"The extreme retreats that we have seen in glaciers and sea ice will come to a halt.

"For the time being, global warming has paused, and there may well be some cooling."

But Prof Latif believes that the pause represents only a temporary respite rather than a challenge to the basis of global warming.

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Despite icy weather, overall trend is warmer: experts

Yahoo News 11 Jan 10;

PARIS (AFP) – Frigid weather that has gripped swathes of the northern hemisphere this winter is unusual but does not undermine an overall global trend of warming, experts said on Monday.

Northern Europe and northeast Asia have experienced brutal snowstorms and freezing temperatures, and cities as far south as Seville in Spain and Miami in Florida have been plunged into the deepest chill in decades.

The reason is a natural phenomenon known as the Arctic Oscillation, said Barry Gromett of Britain's Met Office.

"It's a relatively abnormal pattern but it's not unprecedented at all, it's something that happens every 10 years or so," he said in an interview with AFP.

Also called the Northern Hemisphere Annular Mode or the North Atlantic Oscillation, the anomaly consists of a massive system of high-pressure air that sits over Greenland.

"It's like a great big boulder in the stream. It cuts off Europe's supply of mild, moist Atlantic air. Instead, we get Arctic winds that feed in clockwise, which means we get the cold stuff off Scandinavia and the Arctic regions."

Frigid air streams are also deflected around the "boulder" into southerly North America, he said. And another consequence is to strengthen the grip of the so-called Siberian high-pressure system, intensifying wintery weather in northern China and other parts of northeast Asia.

Just as some parts of the world are experiencing extreme lows in temperature, others are having unusual highs, as warmer winds are directed to unusual places, said Gromett.

Parts of Canada and Alaska have been experiencing temperatures that are five to 10 degrees Celsius (nine to 18 degrees Fahrenheit) above the norm, while parts of North Africa and the Mediterranean basin have also been significantly warm.

"In fact, in the first week of January, Crete recorded a temperature of more than 30 C (86 F)," he said.

Michel Daloz with Meteo France, the French national weathercaster, said the northern hemisphere's cold spell in 2010 was relatively balmy compared with previous episodes.

"The natural variability of the climate means that there are troughs of cold from time to time," he said.

In 1956, 1963 and 1985, "there were temperatures of between -25 and -15 C (-13 F to 5 F) across France," Daloz said.

Nor did it undermine data showing a relentless warming, he said.

"In fact, in early December, our main focus was on the clement weather," he said.

According to the Met Office, 2009 is provisionally the fifth warmest on record, and 2010 could be the warmest ever, driven by the man-made greenhouse effect and by a return to El Nino, a natural warming phenomenon caused by a buildup of warm water in the western Pacific.

El Nino reappeared in June 2009 and is likely to persist through the first quarter of 2010, according to the UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO).

In Geneva, WMO expert Omar Baddour said the present Arctic Oscillation was probably the severest in 30 to 50 years, but predicted it would soon end.

"Generally it lasts a few weeks or a month, a month and a half. It started in December, so we are nearing the end of the episode," Baddour said.

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Best of our wild blogs: 11 Jan 10

New guide books from the Singapore Science Centre: Mosses and Sponges from Habitatnews

Ubin
from Singapore Nature

Dead Fish Patrol: Chek Jawa, Pulau Ubin
on the wild shores of singapore with mud slinging mudskippers, frenzied fiddler crabs and marvellous mangroves

Bitten by a Bittern
from Biodiversity Singapore

Paradise tree snake @ Ubin
from sgbeachbum

Long-tailed Shrike impales lizard
from Bird Ecology Study Group

Tanah Merah Beach
from encounters with nature

Cry naught
from The annotated budak

Monday Morgue: 11th January 2010
from The Lazy Lizard's Tales

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Plankton bloom monitored by AVA

Straits Times Forum 11 Jan 10;

I REFER to the letters, 'Set up body to handle food crises' (last Tuesday) by Mr Liu Fook Thim, and 'A wake-up call for Singapore' (last Friday) by Mr Winston Lee.

Plankton blooms can happen very quickly if the conditions are right. For example, a combination of factors like sudden shifts in the weather between bouts of sunshine and heavy rain; nutrients from the land washed into the sea by the rain; and little water exchange from rising and ebbing tides.

While the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) already has in place a programme to monitor the water quality in coastal fish farming areas regularly, there are currently no foolproof methods that can accurately predict an impending bloom.

The monitoring programme has to be complemented by good aquaculture practices, including preventive measures to minimise fish kills during incidents of plankton bloom. Such practices include avoiding overstocking of netcages under normal situations, and, in the event of a bloom, the capacity to lower stocking densities even further and having aerators and pumps to disperse the plankton bloom and increase oxygen in the water.

In the recent case of plankton bloom, AVA was alerted about fish deaths in the Pasir Ris Beach area on Dec 26. Investigations were conducted immediately and fish farmers were quickly advised on mitigation measures for plankton bloom. AVA officers were also at the farms daily to monitor water conditions and give technical advice to the farmers.

AVA will continue to work with experts and agencies to develop an early alert system that is tailored to local conditions to strengthen our monitoring system. We will also work with the farmers to strengthen their contingency plans, such as putting in place appropriate aeration systems to prepare for similar situations.

Goh Shih Yong
Assistant Director, Corporate Communications
for Chief Executive Officer
Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority
Ministry of National Development

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