New Greenhouse Gas Regulations

This week the EPA proposed its first-ever regulation of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural-gas plant emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.

Industry officials and environmentalists said in interviews that the rule, which comes on the heels of tough new requirements that the Obama administration imposed on mercury emissions and cross-state pollution from utilities within the past year, dooms any proposal to build a new coal-fired plant that does not have costly carbon controls....

The rule provides an exception for coal plants that are already permitted and beginning construction within a year. There are about 20 coal plants now pursuing permits; two of them are federally subsidized and would meet the new standard with advanced pollution controls.

Based on the coverage I read, it looks like the coal industry and its political patrons are trying to paint this as a sign of the EPA having a radical agenda. The EPA only came to this point reluctantly, however. The EPA was bound by a Supreme Court decision in 2007 to determine whether carbon dioxide was a harmful pollutant as defined by the Clean Air Act. Once the EPA determined that carbon dioxide emissions are causing harm in 2009, it was bound by the Clean Air Act to issue regulations. Even so, the Obama administration waited three years after the initial determination to do something about it because they wanted Congress to pass a new climate change bill.

A potential downside of the new regulation is that it only applies to new power plants and not existing ones. So this will not lead to an immediate decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. That will only happen once older coal plants come offline and get replaced with cleaner power sources. However, David Roberts argues that regulations of existing plants are bound to come at some point.

Here’s the story: Once something is deemed a pollutant under the Clean Air Act (which, in the case of CO2, was settled by the Mass v. EPA Supreme Court case), then it must be regulated under Section 111 of the act, the New Source Performance Standards program.

Section 111b governs new sources. That’s what was issued today. But when EPA regulates under 111b, that triggers a legal obligation for it also to regulate existing sources under 111d.
Which is a nerdy way of saying: EPA is legally obligated to regulate existing power-plant sources of CO2.

All that remains is to determine the timing. A bunch of green groups sued EPA over their delay on CO2 several years back. The settlement that was reached obligated EPA to issue CO2 regs by last September. Obviously that didn’t happen. Green groups then agreed to a few extensions. They have taken the issuance of the rule today as a sign of good faith from EPA that it’s on track.

Regulation of existing sources under 111d is a much trickier, more difficult matter than regulation of new sources. There are genuinely novel questions of law and technology involved. EPA has been grappling with these questions, but it’s not easy and there are a great many interested stakeholders, to say the least. Even if it wanted to, EPA probably couldn’t get that rule done and issued before the election.

On the whole, I think this is a step in the right direction, though perhaps not one that will bear immediate fruit. If Obama is reelected, it would not surprise me to see some regulation of existing sources during his second term. Of course, if he loses, the new regulation could be watered down or rescinded entirely, though the latter would be in defiance of the Supreme Court.

Climate Change and Conspiracy Theories

Yesterday Grist disseminated the graphic at right to mock assertions that anthropogenic climate change is just a hoax. Who calls climate change a hoax? Republican politicians do.

• James Inhofe, currently the ranking Republican member (and former chair) of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, had this to say in 2003: "With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it." This was not an off-hand or out-of-context remark, as he continues to stand by his statement and has written a recent book with the same title to promote his conspiracy theory.
• Rick Santorum, a Republican presidential candidate and former Senator, also believes that anthropogenic climate change is a hoax: "“I for one never bought the hoax. I for one understand just from science that there are one hundred factors that influence the climate. To suggest that one minor factor of which man’s contribution is a minor factor in the minor factor is the determining ingredient in the sauce that affects the entire global warming and cooling is just absurd on its face." 
• Ron Paul, another Republican presidential candidate with a loyal following, has also endorsed the conspiracy theory view: "You know, the greatest hoax I think that has been around in many, many years if not hundreds of years has been this hoax on the environment and global warming."
• Rick Perry, Republican governor of Texas and former presidential candidate, on climate change: “I do believe that the issue of global warming has been politicized.... I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects."

These aren't just obscure crackpots with websites; this is the current Republican mainstream. It's not hard to find many more like them, either among politicians or among the conservative punditry. It is unfortunate and a little scary that people who reject climate science have such influence over one of our two major parties. When such people hold positions of power, it has negative ramifications not only for climate research and regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, but also for energy policy and wildlife conservation.

At the same time, it is not at all surprising that many opponents of reducing greenhouse gas emissions have turned towards a conspiracy theory to support their cause. When almost all climate scientists have concluded that the earth is warming due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions, people who want to reject that conclusion have two possible explanations. Either (a) most of the experts in the field don't know what they're talking about, or (b) the experts are covering up the truth with the help of NGOs, government agencies, and even some corporations. Option (a) is easily refuted and has the problem of asserting that non-experts and pundits know more than the experts. Option (b) is a conspiracy theory, and not even a particularly believable one.

Climate Change and Tropical Birds

A major concern for conservationists is how well animal and plant species will adapt to climate change. A particular problem are animals with isolated populations or specialist habits. Many such creatures can be found in the tropics, and a recent study looked into how tropical birds might fare. The results are not good:

There may be less birds for birders to see in the world as the planet warms. Climate change, in combination with deforestation, could send between 100 and 2,500 tropical birds to extinction before the end of century, according to new research published in Biological Conservation. The wide range depends on the extent of climate and how much habitat is lost, but researchers say the most likely range of extinctions is between 600 and 900 species, meaning about 10-14 percent of tropical birds, excluding migratory species.

"Birds are perfect canaries in the coal mine—it's hard to avoid that metaphor—for showing the effects of global change on the world's ecosystems and the people who depend on those ecosystems," says lead author and notable ornithologist Çağan Şekercioğlu with the University of Utah. "Compared to temperate species that often experience a wide range of temperature on a yearly basis, tropical species, especially those limited to tropical forests with stable climates, are less likely to keep up with rapid climate change."

Şekercioğlu and colleagues scoured 200 scientific studies related to tropical birds and climate change to develop their estimate, which is in line with previous estimates of bird declines linked to a warming planet.

Those birds most susceptible to climate change impacts include high-elevation species which could quite literally run out of habitat, and those already restricted to small ranges. An increase in extreme weather events, such as droughts and storms, may also imperil some species. The increasing intensity of hurricanes, even if frequency diminishes, may threaten coastal birds, while long droughts could hurt birds' ability to find food during breeding season. Already, the Amazon has suffered two record droughts in the last 7 years, leading many scientists to fear for the ecosystem's resiliency in the face of climate change.

Disease may also pose a problem. Malaria is expected to spread to higher altitudes and latitudes, possibly imperiling some tropical bird species. Rising sea levels may also pose a problem for coastal and island birds.

It is important to remember that birds do not just depend on a patch of habitat at a certain temperature but on the complex of plants and invertebrate and vertebrate animals that live there. Many species may be able to shift their ranges, but others will run into significant trouble if their favored habitats are not able to move along with them.

Goldfinches and Climate Change

The U.S. Forest Service has released two new portals for exploring their climate change database: the Climate Change Bird Atlas and the Climate Change Tree Atlas. These portals give some idea of how species might react to climate change under different warming scenarios. These are should be taken as estimates; some species will adapt better than predicted to changing conditions while others will probably have a harder time. I saw the tree atlas first in a blog post at Weather Underground, which feared the potential for buckeyes to invade Ann Arbor. I learned of the bird atlas through a post by Julia Whitty at the Blue Marble blog at Mother Jones.

Her blog post highlighted the changes that would occur in the range of the American Goldfinch, currently a very common species in the northern United States. Under high warming and emissions scenarios, its range would change drastically from the present one and become more common in southern Canada than in the northern U.S. In her words, "the 'Canadian goldfinch' could be set to become the iconic provincial bird of Quebec, New Brunswick, and Ontario." New Jersey's state bird would go from being very common to relatively uncommon and perhaps only a seasonal visitor in some parts of the state. The potential change is eye-opening, to say the least. If goldfinches could decline here so readily, how many other species would we lose entirely in the state?

Some bird species will no doubt become more common at the same time. One species that might become common here is Painted Bunting, which is now an occasional visitor to the state (maybe one or two sightings a year). The Painted Bunting maps are shown below. Other species that could arrive here under the Forest Service models include Loggerhead Shrike and Scissor-tailed Flycatcher.

I post these maps because they show the potential changes in species abundance rather dramatically. While I would certainly enjoy seeing Painted Buntings and Scissor-tailed Flycatchers on a regular basis, these sorts of changes will no doubt be stressful for many species and possibly put some of the rarer ones at risk of extinction. For that reason, I would prefer that these scenarios not come to pass.

Range Shifts Linked to Climate Change

Red-banded Hairstreaks are expanding northward.

Many studies over the past decade have tried to document how animals adapt their ranges in response to a warmer climate. A recent paper analyzed data from over 50 such studies to get a sense of the bigger picture.

The findings indicate that among the plants and animals tracked in the studies, species over all were escaping to higher elevations at an average rate of 36.1 feet per decade and moving away from the equator at a rate of 10.1 miles per decade. That’s a steady march poleward of eight inches per hour. Those two rates are respectively two and three greater than those found in the last similar meta-analysis in 2003.

The data also clearly indicates that the species changing their distribution the most rapidly are those in regions where the most warming has occurred.

While the study pulled together literature from around the world, the vast majority of available research comes from Europe and North America, leaving big holes in global understanding how species in one of the most biologically rich areas, the tropics, are responding to climate change.

These unanswered questions are further complicated by the primary role of precipitation, as opposed to temperature, in distributing most species in the tropics. The precise effects of climate change on precipitation are still a source of debate and uncertainty.

Earlier Springs Due to Climate Change?

One of the issues discussed in the paper I reviewed for yesterday's post was the possibility that climate change could interfere with the migration ecology of Red Knots. Climate change theory predicts that a warmer climate will bring more frequent and intense storms to our area. Since severe weather delays the timing of horseshoe crab spawning, future Red Knots could face more frequent springs when they arrive before most horseshoe crabs have spawned. Such a disruption could have a severe impact on their survival.

Disruptions due to a changing climate may harm plants as well as animals. A recent study found that plants are blooming earlier than they used to.

A University of Alberta study shows that climate change over the past 70 years has pushed some of the province's native wildflowers and trees into earlier blooming times, making them more vulnerable to damaging frosts, and ultimately, threatening reproduction.

U of A PhD candidate Elisabeth Beaubien and her supervisor, professor Andreas Hamann of the Department of Renewable Resources, studied the life cycle of central Alberta spring blooms, spanning 1936 to 2006, evaluating climate trends and the corresponding changes in bloom times for seven plant species.

Using thermal time models, the researchers found that the bloom dates for early spring species such as prairie crocuses and aspen trees had advanced by two weeks over the stretch of seven decades, with later-blooming species such as saskatoon and chokecherry bushes being pushed ahead by up to six days. The average winter monthly temperature increased considerably over 70 years, with the greatest change noted in February, which warmed by 5.3 degrees Celsius.

Changes in the time of blooming will no doubt affect the plants' relationships with the insects that pollinate them or other animals that use them for food.

Changes in Rainfall Affect Birds' Wintering Grounds

Migratory bird species that breed in the U.S. and Canada often winter in the Caribbean, Central America, and South America. A Smithsonian study of American Redstarts on their wintering grounds in Jamaica found that rainfall changes disrupted the birds' migration schedule in the spring.

Precipitation in Jamaica is highly seasonal, with consistent rainfall from September to November and a pronounced dry season from January to March. The scientists observed the redstarts in their non-breeding territories for five years during the dry season. They paid special attention to the annual variation in dry season rainfall. The correlation between the amount of insects in a bird's territory and the timing of its departure suggested to the team that annual variation in food availability was an important determining factor in the timing of spring migration. Had the redstarts relied on internal cues alone to schedule their spring departure, they would have all left their winter territories at the same time each year.

"Our results support the idea that environmental conditions on tropical non-breeding areas can influence the departure time for spring migration," said Colin Studds, a postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute's Migratory Bird Center and lead author of the study. "We found that the same birds changed their spring departure from one year to the next in relation to the amount of rainfall and food in March."

During the past 16 years, the dry season in Jamaica has become both increasingly severe and unpredictable, leading to an 11 percent drop in total rainfall during the three-month annual drought. Making the future even more dire, climate models predict not only increased warming on temperate breeding areas but also continued drying in the Caribbean.

The result has obvious implications for climate change, since warmer average temperatures are likely to reduce rainfall in many areas. A major question is how birds will cope with the disrupted migration schedule. In many cases, birds time their migrations to arrive on their breeding grounds just as certain food sources are becoming available, whether those are insects or seeds or some other source.

Sea Level Rise in Virginia

Yesterday's New York Times has an example of the sorts of challenges that people in coastal areas will face increasingly as the climate warms.

Climate change is a subject of friction in Virginia. The state’s attorney general, Ken T. Cuccinelli II, is trying to prove that a prominent climate scientist engaged in fraud when he was a researcher at the University of Virginia. But the residents of coastal neighborhoods here are less interested in the debate than in the real-time consequences of a rise in sea level....

Larchmont residents have relentlessly lobbied the city to address the problem, and last summer it broke ground on a project to raise the street around the “u” by 18 inches and to readjust the angle of the storm drains so that when the river rises, the water does not back up into the street. The city will also turn a park at the edge of the river back into wetlands — it is now too saline for lawn grass to grow anyway. The cost for the work on this one short stretch is $1.25 million.

The expensive reclamation project is popular in Larchmont, but it is already drawing critics who argue that cities just cannot handle flooding in such a one-off fashion. To William Stiles, executive director of Wetlands Watch, a local conservation group, the project is well meaning but absurd. Mr. Stiles points out that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has already spent $144,000 in recent years to raise each of six houses on the block....

Politics aside, the city of Norfolk is tackling the sea-rise problem head on. In August, the Public Works Department briefed the City Council on the seriousness of the situation, and Mayor Paul D. Fraim has acknowledged that if the sea continues rising, the city might actually have to create “retreat” zones.

Norfolk has special problems since it has to deal with land subsidence in addition to sea level rise. The fill and natural sediment underneath the city is settling, which exacerbates the effects of climate change. Between subsidence and sea level rise, the city has lost 14.5 inches to the sea in the past century. While Norfolk's situation is unusually severe, it bodes ill for other coastal towns and cities.

NOAA Reports on the State of the Climate in 2009

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association released its first State of the Climate report yesterday. The report uses data through 2009 and looks at key climate indicators. The data for those indicators is consistent with a warming climate.

Based on comprehensive data from multiple sources, the report defines 10 measurable planet-wide features used to gauge global temperature changes. The relative movement of each of these indicators proves consistent with a warming world. Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, air temperature over oceans, sea level, ocean heat, humidity and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the Earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern hemisphere....

The report emphasizes that human society has developed for thousands of years under one climatic state, and now a new set of climatic conditions are taking shape. These conditions are consistently warmer, and some areas are likely to see more extreme events like severe drought, torrential rain and violent storms....

While year-to-year changes in temperature often reflect natural climatic variations such as El Niño/La Niña events, changes in average temperature from decade-to-decade reveal long-term trends such as global warming. Each of the last three decades has been much warmer than the decade before. At the time, the 1980s was the hottest decade on record. In the 1990s, every year was warmer than the average of the previous decade. The 2000s were warmer still.

“The temperature increase of one degree Fahrenheit over the past 50 years may seem small, but it has already altered our planet,” said Deke Arndt, co-editor of the report and chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. “Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are more common. And, as the new report tells us, there is now evidence that over 90 percent of warming over the past 50 years has gone into our ocean.”

According to the report, the years 2000-2009 stand as the warmest decade on record. The full State of the Climate in 2009 report is available as a pdf and is accompanied by a site where you can examine the data behind the report.

NOAA also created a portal for the government's climate data, www.climate.gov.

Besides the climate report, there is an interesting post at RealClimate about the paper that first used the term "global warming." That journal article, "Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?" by Wally Broecker, will be 35 years old as of August 8. At the time, the climate was near the end of a 30-year cooling trend that had canceled the effect of carbon dioxide emissions. Broecker foresaw that increasing emissions of carbon dioxide would reverse this trend and cause rapid warming. He predicted a 0.8°C temperature rise over the 20th century, which is fairly close to what happened. RealClimate explains what led him to those conclusions.

Pollution Regulations Could Reduce Greenhouse Gases

By now you are probably aware that there will not be a comprehensive climate bill this year. There might be a smaller bill, but in the meantime, climate action will be up to the EPA. There has already been some movement on regulating greenhouse gas emissions from major sources. In addition to that initiative, mercury regulations have potential to reduce greenhouse gases indirectly.

That is because scientists say mercury from coal accumulates in many fish. Children and babies exposed to the metal, through mother's milk or eating contaminated fish, are at risk of learning and developmental problems. Adults who eat too many of the fish also face risks....

When combined with the EPA's other current and coming rules on "criteria" pollutants, like ones that cause acid rain and smog, the mercury measure would force utilities to invest tens of millions of dollars on technologies to remove the substances....

Francois Broquin, a co-author of reports on coal by Bernstein Research, said the combined rules could push as much as 20 percent of U.S. coal-fired electric generation capacity to retire by 2015. "Obviously that will have an impact," he said.

Frank O'Donnell, the president of the environmental group Clean Air Watch, said that if a large chunk of the coal-fired power fleet went into retirement it could help the country exceed Obama's goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020....

Utilities would likely build plants to burn natural gas, which emits half the carbon that coal does, as the main alternative. Alternative energy like wind and solar power, which provided the most new U.S. electricity capacity last year, could also become more attractive to utilities.

A reduction of 17% (or somewhat less than that) by 2020 is well below what is needed to prevent the worst effects of climate change. However, it is better than nothing and could build some momentum for better climate change policy. Perhaps in future years the political climate will be more favorable to passing a climate change law with deeper cuts.

Defending Climate Science (and Scientists)

A group of scientists has published a letter in the journal Science defending climate science and, in particular, the evidence for climate change, from recent attacks and harassment. The entire letter is worth reading, but here is the key part to keep in mind:

But there is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change:

(i) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

(ii) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

(iii) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth's climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

(iv) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

(v) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

Much more can be, and has been, said by the world's scientific societies, national academies, and individuals, but these conclusions should be enough to indicate why scientists are concerned about what future generations will face from business-as-usual practices. We urge our policy-makers and the public to move forward immediately to address the causes of climate change, including the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels.

The scientists do not offer specifics on each of those points, but plenty of websites do. I would suggest the lists answering common contrarian arguments at Skeptical Science and New Scientist if you are interested in more detail.

Obama Allows More Coastal Drilling on the Alaska and Atlantic Coasts

Yesterday, the Obama administration announced that it would open much more coastline to oil and natural gas exploration. The Atlantic coast would be opened from Florida north to Delaware, more of the eastern Gulf of Mexico would be available, and the Chuckchi and Beaufort Seas in Alaska would be opened. The southern half of Florida and the northeastern Atlantic coast (from New Jersey northward) would remain closed to drilling. Likewise, the entire Pacific Coast from California to Washington would remain closed. Meanwhile, Bristol Bay in Alaska will become a protected area and closed to drilling.

Obama justified the move in terms of energy independence:

"This is not a decision that I've made lightly," Obama said at Maryland's Andrews Air Force Base, near the capital. He was staged beside the "Green Hornet," a Navy fighter jet designed to run on a fuel mix of half biomass. He also discussed administration policies to make automobiles more fuel efficient and to develop "clean coal" and alternative energy supplies.

Obama said his plan "is part of a broader strategy that will move us from an economy that runs on fossil fuels and foreign oil to one that relies more on homegrown fuels and clean energy. And the only way this transition will succeed is if it strengthens our economy in the short term and long term. To fail to recognize this reality would be a mistake."

I would feel better about this development if it were announced as part of a compromise that would bring significant action on climate change. Since this is being done well in advance of voting on any climate bill in the Senate, it is not clear how much of a political difference it will make. Sen. Lindsey Graham had some positive things to say about the move, but he did not make any public commitments regarding a climate bill. Most of his Republican colleagues were still not satisfied. The move may be calculated to please moderate and conservative Democrats, though again there were no public commitments from them regarding a climate bill. As with the health care bill, Democrats have prematurely conceded one of their potential bargaining chips.

Ken Salazar spoke yesterday morning as if cap and trade is dead.

"I think the term 'cap and trade' is not in the lexicon anymore," Salazar said, adding that supporters -- including senators working on legislation -- will focus more on ideas such as slowing pollution, creating jobs and becoming energy independent. "It's in that context" the Senate will move forward, he said.

A spokeswoman later clarified that he was only referring to the phrase "cap and trade," but that still leaves how the administration plans to slow and reverse carbon emissions as an open question.

Even if oil companies take advantage of the new drilling opportunities, it is unclear how much they will be able to produce. The most optimistic estimate has 4 billion barrels of oil and 30 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the newly opened areas, which represents a fraction of US energy needs. Even then, it would take decades to study potential deposits and implement drilling plans. The USGS will study coastal areas first, to identify tracts that might be amenable to energy development. Oil companies will then be able to bid for development leases. The eastern Gulf of Mexico is the area that seems most promising.

Offshore oil development carries substantial environmental risks. A worst-case scenario would be an event like the Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969, when 80,000-100,000 gallons of crude oil leaked from an oil rig into the channel and onto California beaches. That is an extreme case, but offshore rigs are constantly at risk, particularly in hurricane-prone areas like the Gulf of Mexico or southern Atlantic coast. Last fall, an oil rig off the northwest coast of Australia leaked oil for months and eventually caught fire.

According to the Center for Biological Diversity, new offshore oil exploration would threaten wildlife.

Oil development in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, home to all of America’s polar bears, is strongly opposed by conservation groups as no technologies exist to clean up oil spills in icy waters. Oil development in the Beaufort Sea would likely also be visible from the shores of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Today’s plan would allow existing leases in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas to move forward while the remainder of these areas would be subject to additional leasing following further environmental studies.

The only bright spot in today’s announcement was that a lease sale proposed in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, within critical habitat for the North Pacific right whale, the world’s most endangered whale, would be cancelled. However, important habitat for the similarly endangered North Atlantic right whale would be opened in its stead.

So far I have not seen any support for this move among environmentalists; in fact, criticism has been fairly strong, with petitions against the move circulating from several organizations. (For example, here is one from Oceana.) I hope that this will solidify support for a climate bill from moderate senators, but I have my doubts.

Arctic Seabirds

Predicting how climate change might affect animal species is a major concern for conservationists. The best current summary of how climate change might affect American birds is the recently-released State of the Birds, but research is still ongoing. A recent study looked at how Arctic-nesting seabirds might be affected by studying ways that birds currently die at the breeding colonies.

Mallory and two other Canadian scientists decided to combine 33 years of observation into a paper that was released in Arctic, the journal of the Arctic Institute of North America. In it, the trio track the unusual ways Arctic seabirds die and they predict that a warming climate could have serious consequences for these birds. The study is based on observations of six species of birds on 11 different seabird colonies in the eastern Arctic ranging from northern Hudson Bay to Devon Island.

Typical causes of death include crashing into each other or cliffs during heavy fog, being slammed into the ocean by Katabatic winds or, perhaps most grizzly of all, dying from a combination of heat stress and blood loss due to mosquito attacks....

Few birds winter in the Arctic because of the harsh climate conditions. But in the spring, there is a veritable explosion as millions of birds return to nest. Seabirds in Mallory's study area tend to spend the winter months floating in the North Atlantic ocean. When they return in the spring, conditions are often still very harsh. Mallory has seen fulmars and thick-billed murres incubate eggs with only their heads visible above the snow.

The preferred nesting sites of many seabirds are cliffs, which often prove to be very dangerous. Falling rocks and chunks of ice, as well as slides kill great numbers of birds. In fact, the authors cite one incident in which over 800 murres and kittiwakes died almost instantly when the ledges on which they were nesting collapsed. Mallory suspects cliffs could become unstable as temperatures rise, with more freeze-thaw action of ice.

They also predict that increased storm activity could cause additional mortality among nestlings. Dampened feathers do not insulate very well, even in slightly warmer temperatures.

The press release and abstract do not specify which species were involved, beyond the Northern Fulmar, Black-legged Kittiwake, and Thick-billed Murre mentioned in the quote above.

High Arctic Species Doing Poorly

While low Arctic and sub-Arctic wildlife has been doing rather well, high Arctic wildlife have been doing very poorly, according to the latest Arctic Species Trend Index. Overall there has been a 26% decline in high Arctic populations over the past few decades.

Populations of lemmings, caribou and red knot are some of the species that have experienced declines over the past 34 years, according to the first report from The Arctic Species Trend Index (ASTI), which provides crucial information on how the Arctic's ecosystems and wildlife are responding to environmental change.

While some of these declines may be part of a natural cycle, there is concern that pressures such as climate change may be exacerbating natural cyclic declines....

Data collected on migratory Arctic shorebirds show that their numbers have also decreased. Further research is now needed to determine whether this is the result of changes in the Arctic or at other stopover sites on their migration.

Louise McRae adds: "Migratory Arctic species such as brent goose, dunlin and turnstone are regular visitors to the UK's shores. We need to sit up and take notice of what's happening in other parts of the world if we want to continue to experience a diversity of wildlife on our own doorstep."

The report was prepared as the Arctic Species Trend Index on the basis of about 1,000 datasets; the full report is available on the index website. The BBC has a photo gallery of some of the declining species.

Eastern Birds Shrinking in Response to Climate Change

Scarlet Tanager / Photo by Vincent Lucas (a.k.a. leppyone)

Occasionally I see questions about why bird banding is useful (or even assertions that banding is outdated). Banding can serve a variety of purposes, from identifying the birds present at a location to tracking individual birds to studying avian diets or environmental toxins. Here is one example of how even the most basic measurements can be useful, if they are done consistently over a long period. A station in western Pennsylvania has been banding birds since 1961 and taking measurements of the birds' weight and wing chord. ("Wing chord" is the distance from a bird's wrist to the tip of the primaries.) Over the period from 1961 to 2007, the birds' measurements steadily decreased.

They examined the records of 486,000 individual birds that had been caught and measured at the ringing station from 1961 to 2007.

These birds belonged to 102 species, arriving over different seasons. Each was weighed. It also had the length of its wings measured, recorded as wing chord length, or the distance between the bird's wrist to the tip of the longest primary feather.

Their sample included local resident bird species, overwintering species, and even long distance migrants arriving from the Neotropics.

What they found was striking.

Of 83 species caught during spring migration, 60 have become smaller over the 46 year study period, weighing less and having shorter wings.

Of the 75 species migrating in autumn, 66 have become smaller.

In summer, 51 of 65 breeding species have similarly reduced in size, as have 20 out of 26 wintering species.

The differences in size are not big.

"On average, the decline in mass of spring migrants over the 46 year study was just 1.3%," says Dr Buskirk.

"For a 10g warbler that's a loss of just 130mg."

But some species are losing more weight.

For example, the rose-breasted grosbeak has declined in mass by about 4%, while the Kentucky warbler has dropped 3.3% in weight and the scarlet tanager 2.3%.

According to a biological principle known as Bergman's Rule, individuals that live further north will be slightly larger than individuals within the same species that live further south. The reasons for the link between climate and size are unclear, but the link is well attested. Thus if the climate is warming, one would expect birds to become gradually smaller. That appears to be what is happening in this case. The link to warming is strengthened by the fact that species that spend part of the year in the tropics have shrunk faster than resident species.

Whether this will affect the birds species' long-term viability remains to be seen. So far, there does not seem to be a link between smaller physical size and population declines. Many of the species that have decreased in physical size are doing quite well otherwise. Those populations threatened by climate change appear to be struggling with other climate-related problems, such as droughts or the timing of migration. Still, the trend is worth monitoring, for what it tells us about the changing climate and the bird populations.

Predicting the State of the Birds

Last week, the Interior Department, Audubon, and a coalition of other conservation-minded organizations announced the 2010 State of the Birds report. (Oddly, the report was released late on a Thursday; usually the end of the week is reserved for news that agencies would prefer people not notice, like bank failures.) This year's report tries to predict how birds might respond to climate change. It suggests conservation actions to mitigate those responses and reduce stress as the climate continues to warm.

Relative vulnerability of U.S. birds by habitat

The report divides birds into groups based on broad habitat types or location. Since this was produced in part by the Interior Department, the report includes all birds found in the United States and its territories, including islands in the Pacific and West Indies. Each bird species was assessed on five traits and rated as high, medium, or low vulnerability based on that assessment. Here, briefly are some of the report's predictions.

• Oceanic birds will face changes in prey distribution, which will affect the viability of breeding colonies. In addition, sea level rise may threaten low-lying colonies.
• Coastal birds, which use beaches and salt marshes, face threats from sea-level rise, both from permanent inundation of some low-lying areas and from increased flooding and erosion.
• Arctic and alpine species are handled together because they face the similar problem of having few options for moving to more suitable areas as their current habitat warms. Arctic birds are often long-distance migrants, so they face climate-related changes all along their migration routes. In the Arctic, melting permafrost could release additional toxins and allow woody plants to encroach on tundra habitat.
• Island birds (both Pacific and Caribbean) are particularly vulnerable if they are endemic to an island, as is true of 42 Hawaiian bird species. A warming climate could create significant changes in precipitation; this would affect the vegetation and insect life that birds depend on.
• Aridlands will become warmer and drier, which will fundamentally change the vegetation structure in many areas. As precipitation decreases, riparian habitats will shrink, along the bird populations that depend on them. Some species may get a boost as arid habitats are expected to expand to the north and east.
• If temperatures increase without a corresponding increase in precipitation, wetlands could shrink considerably from evaporation and loss of input. Mountainous wetlands and the prairie pothole region are particularly vulnerable. 
• Grasslands are expected to become drier, and continuing increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide could encourage woody plants to encroach on grassland habitat. The vulnerable grassland birds are those that are less likely to move in the face of changing habitats, such as grouse. 
• Forest types are likely to shift northward; oak-hickory and oak-pine forests will expand considerably, while other types will contract within the United States. The boreal forest will shrink somewhat as its southern border moves north. Most forest birds are not at high risk because they reproduce quickly, but species that rely on a single forest type will face challenges.

The predictions discussed in this year's report are not for changes far off in the future. In some cases, they are happening already. Bird species are known to be shifting their winter ranges northward, based on Christmas Bird Count data.

For more details, including recommended conservation measures, see the full report.


Mitigation is going to become increasingly important as the climate continues to warm. At this point it seems unlikely that we will see effective action from the U.S. Congress on climate change. Even if the EPA is successful in imposing greenhouse gas restrictions, its restrictions may not reduce emissions quickly enough. So we are likely looking at some pretty dramatic changes over the next few decades, and long-term conservation plans will need to account for that.

More Species to Be Affected by Climate Change

The Wildlife Conservation Society last week issued a report on animal species that could be harmed by climate change (opens as pdf). They wanted to publicize some lesser known species that have a lot to lose even if polar bears get more attention (not always for good reasons). The biggest worries tend to be about species with limited ranges or that cannot move much closer to the poles.

There are a few birds on the WCS list. Here are the explanations for their inclusion:

• Bicknell's Thrush: "Scientists have found that a mean temperature increase of just 1 degree Celsius would reduce by more than half the critical mountaintop breeding habitat for the Bicknell’s thrush, a songbird that breeds only in eastern North America. Given the limited availability of this habitat, WCS is developing management practices to inform the conservation of these high elevation areas."
• Magellanic Penguin: "Climate-induced changes, including shifts in ocean temperatures and prey availability, are making reproduction difficult for Magellanic penguins. WCS research indicates that in the last decade, the penguins have been laying their eggs later in the season and swimming farther away from their nests in search of food when they have eggs and chicks. The largest breeding colony of this species in Patagonia has declined more than 20 percent in the last 20 years."
• Buff-breasted Sandpiper and other migratory birds that breed in the Arctic: "Shorebirds migrate from all over the world to breed on the coastal plain of Arctic Alaska, where WCS scientists have observed a variety of impacts from climate change. Buff-breasted sandpipers are nesting more than 10 days earlier than they did 25 years ago—a change that may reflect an earlier emergence of their insect prey. How this timing shift affects this species’ migratory movements throughout their range is unknown."
• Flamingo: "Flamingos breed and feed in shallow wetlands, where water depth and quality impact their access to food and their ability to breed successfully. At WCS project sites in the Caribbean, South America, Asia, and Africa, climate change could threaten flamingos through changing weather patterns that influence water quality and availability—and potentially a wetland’s suitability to support flamingos."

Unfortunately they punt a bit and just name broad categories for a few taxa, such as "Various Primate Species,"  "Coral," and "Numerous Amphibian Species." Even the last bird, "Flamingo," is not really a species but a group. If they have evidence of these groups being threatened, they ought to be able to name a few examples.

Warmest Decade on Record

Cartoon by Pat Bagley of the Salt Lake Tribune

Occasionally I see arguments that climate change has slowed down or reversed course. Such arguments usually cite 1998 as the warmest year on record and insist that the (slightly) cooler years since then mean that we have nothing to worry about. However, if you look at a longer trend, the present decade looks less like a reprieve than a plateau on a continuing trend. The years 2000-2009 are the warmest decade on record, and 2009 is on track to be the fifth-warmest year.

While 1998 is still considered the warmest year on record, researchers say that preliminary data shows 2009 will likely be the fifth warmest. The analysis also shows that while the US and Canada experienced cooler than average temperature this year, temperatures in Southeast Asia and Africa could be the warmest yet.

Warmer temperature exacerbated drought conditions across the world. According to WMO, China experienced its worst drought in five decades. Drought in East Africa killed tens of thousands of livestock, while a poor monsoon season hit India's agriculture hard. A crippling drought in Australia also continued unabated this year.

Temperature data is collected from climate and weather stations around the world, ships and buoys on the sea, and satellites.

The record achieved is, of course, the modern record as established by instrumental data since the middle of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately we do not have instrumental records going beyond that. However, analysis of physical records such as tree rings and ice cores, both of which are sensitive to changes in temperature, suggests that current temperatures are higher than they have been in the past millennium. Atmospheric carbon levels are also at all-time highs, according to physical evidence.

A second point worth noting in this recent report is that lower temperature or cooler weather in one region or even continent is not a sign that the global warming trend has stopped. The study of climate change is based on long-term averages of much larger areas.

IPCC graph of the average global temperature for the past 140 years and Northern Hemisphere temperature for the past 1000 years

Copenhagen and Wildlife

BirdLife is requesting five things from the negotiators at the climate conference in Copenhagen.

1. Cut global emissions by the amount needed to limit global average temperature rises to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Developed countries should take the lead in cutting emissions, but rapidly industrialising developing nations must act too. Global emissions must peak and decline well before 2020, and go to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Industrialised countries must take on targets of 40% reductions below 1990 levels by 2020.

2. Recognise the vital importance of safeguarding biodiversity, ecosystems and the essential services they provide in climate change mitigation, in particular, reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Tropical deforestation accounts for 15-20% of all human-induced emissions, and must be reduced to zero by 2020. REDD should prioritise conservation of natural tropical forests because they are the most carbon dense, and must exclude conversion of natural forests to industrial forests or plantations. REDD must include provisions which ensure conservation of biodiversity because it is the plants and animals in natural forests that help create their carbon density. REDD must respect, support and promote the rights of local and indigenous peoples.

3. Recognise the vital importance of safeguarding biodiversity, ecosystems and the essential services they provide in climate change adaptation. Healthy bio-diverse environments play a vital role in maintaining and increasing resilience to climate change. Copenhagen outcomes should encompass taking an ecosystem approach to all adaptation, should refer to the direct use of ecosystems as part of a strategy to help people adapt to the adverse effects of climate change, and should recognise vulnerable ecosystems as a priority concern.

4. Provide funding for developing countries to reduce emissions from deforestation, enable adaptation to climate change, and support low-carbon development. At least $200 billion will be needed annually by 2020, including $35 billion for REDD, and $100 billion to enable developing countries to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change.

5. Ensure that when developed countries account for their land-use sectors they account fully for carbon emissions to, and removals from, the atmosphere. Current rules enable countries to hide emissions whilst claiming credit for carbon storage, and the rules proposed in Copenhagen are shaping up to be even worse than the old ones.

The link provides a bit more about their reasoning. I think this is a reasonable list, though I doubt this conference will meet the first goal based on reports in the last few weeks. I hope that the other items will be included in some form. Natural habitats are important carbon sinks, and land use changes (especially moving from natural to developed landscapes) are a major source of emissions. That applies as much to landscape development for "green" projects – from LEED-certified buildings to renewable energy sites – as it does to other types of development.

EPA Recognizes Carbon Emissions as a Threat

Today the EPA declared carbon emissions to be a threat to human health and welfare, which will obligate the agency to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

Jackson said that she did not know when the EPA would reveal detailed plans for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, or if the agency would wait to see if the U.S. Senate passes climate legislation early next year. Jackson said that legislation was still the best way to tackle the problem -- but said she was not trying to prod Congress with Monday's finding.

Instead, Jackson said, the administration was bound to follow the U.S. Supreme Court's order in 2007 to determine if these emissions endanger public health. ...

Businesses argue that such a finding would mean even emitters as small as a mom-and-pop grocery store would be forced to comply with onerous greenhouse gas regulations. The administration has crafted rules that would exempt facilities that emit less than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide or its equivalent annually. But it remains unclear whether that exemption would hold up in court.

I have trouble believing that the timing of the announcement is an accident, as it coincides with the opening of the major climate conference in Copenhagen. It demonstrates some seriousness on the part of the Obama administration as they meet with other world leaders to negotiate a new treaty. Whether or not Jackson intends to put pressure on Congress to pass a cap and trade bill, today's declaration ought to make such a bill more attractive to both supporters and opponents, not just as a way to start regulations but also as a way of influencing their impact.

Past EPA regulations have met with similar wailing on the part of entrenched interests, but ended up costing a lot less than advertised.