Countries Warming up to the Copenhagen Accord

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Nearly 100 Countries Formally ‘Associate’ with Copenhagen Accord — What other choice do they have?  It’s the only agreement going forward that exists, for now.

Image credit: america.gov/Flickr

By Jacob Werksman, WRI

In the months following the Copenhagen climate conference, where the Conference of Parties “took note” of the Copenhagen Accord, governments and commentators have been debating the legal status of this unique document.

The Accord was agreed upon by a subset of the UNFCCC parties, but it lacked the consensus required to be formally adopted by the Conference of Parties. The unusual circumstances left unclear which governments supported the Accord, which governments did not, whether some or all of its provisions could become “operational immediately,” and which would require further actions.

Shortly after COP-15, the UNFCCC Secretariat, with support from the UN Secretary General and the Danish COP Presidency, wrote to the UNFCCC parties and requested that they notify each other what targets for Annex I (developed) countries and actions for non-Annex I (developing) countries they were willing to put forward in response to the Accord. The Secretariat’s letter also requested that parties indicate if they wished to “associate” with the Accord and have their country’s name listed in the final version of the Accord’s opening paragraph.. . . .

As of [March 24th], a total of 73 countries — 40 Annex I and 33 non-Annex I countries (including Kazakhstan) — have submitted targets or actions to the Secretariat. Of these, 64 have explicitly associated themselves with the Accord.

An additional 35 countries have explicitly associated themselves with the Accord but have not submitted targets or actions.

13 countries — including Brazil, Croatia, China, India, Namibia, and Palau — have expressed support for the Accord without “associating” with it, as further discussed below.

4 countries — the Cook Islands, Kuwait, Nauru and Ecuador — have submitted letters to the UNFCCC not associating with or supporting the Accord.

5 countries — an interesting combination of small island and oil exporting countries — have notified the Secretariat that they will not associate with the Accord.”

Source: Solve Climate

Hydraulic Injection Pile

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How safe is this system,will the piles fail, say in 5-years time after completion of the Tower Block. Certain Towers in Singapore are encountering foundation movements as the piles starts losing some of its frictional shears due to distressed soil.

Level Transmitter Diaphragm Material

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For a Level Transmitter with remote seals installed on a Caustic Soda Evaporator Tank, what Diaphragm Material is most suitable? Please note that on HIGH side Caustic Soda Concentration is 48% and temp is @ 140 Deg C and LOW side is connected to top of the tank where Saturated Steam with 13 Bar pres

Limestone Test

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Good day,

Here we go again, hehe. The topic is limestone, limestone in foundry is used as a flux in cupola melting, limestone should be a majority of CaCO3 right? If low levels of CaCO3 is present in limestone what could happen? Is there a method to test those limestone if they are really lim

PRV Installation

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Hi,

16" dia. – 871.873 km long cross country Crude Pipeline from pumping station PS-01 to terminal TS-01 at 871.873 km including intermediate pumping stations PS-02 at 228.6 km, PS-03 at 448.18 km and PS-04 at 666.991 km. We have carried out transient surge analysis of the pipeline to

NASA Study Finds Atlantic ‘Conveyor Belt’ Not Slowing

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overturning circulation of the global ocean
Illustration depicting the overturning circulation of the global ocean. Throughout the Atlantic Ocean, the circulation carries warm waters (red arrows) northward near the surface and cold deep waters (blue arrows) southward. › Larger image
New NASA measurements of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, part of the global ocean conveyor belt that helps regulate climate around the North Atlantic, show no significant slowing over the past 15 years. The data suggest the circulation may have even sped up slightly in the recent past.

The findings are the result of a new monitoring technique, developed by oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using measurements from ocean-observing satellites and profiling floats. The findings are reported in the March 25 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

The Atlantic overturning circulation is a system of currents, including the Gulf Stream, that bring warm surface waters from the tropics northward into the North Atlantic. There, in the seas surrounding Greenland, the water cools, sinks to great depths and changes direction. What was once warm surface water heading north turns into cold deep water going south. This overturning is one part of the vast conveyor belt of ocean currents that move heat around the globe.

Without the heat carried by this circulation system, the climate around the North Atlantic -- in Europe, North America and North Africa -- would likely be much colder. Scientists hypothesize that rapid cooling 12,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age was triggered when freshwater from melting glaciers altered the ocean's salinity and slowed the overturning rate. That reduced the amount of heat carried northward as a result.

Until recently, the only direct measurements of the circulation's strength have been from ship-based surveys and a set of moorings anchored to the ocean floor in the mid-latitudes. Willis' new technique is based on data from NASA satellite altimeters, which measure changes in the height of the sea surface, as well as data from Argo profiling floats. The international Argo array, supported in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, includes approximately 3,000 robotic floats that measure temperature, salinity and velocity across the world's ocean.

With this new technique, Willis was able to calculate changes in the northward-flowing part of the circulation at about 41 degrees latitude, roughly between New York and northern Portugal. Combining satellite and float measurements, he found no change in the strength of the circulation overturning from 2002 to 2009. Looking further back with satellite altimeter data alone before the float data were available, Willis found evidence that the circulation had sped up about 20 percent from 1993 to 2009. This is the longest direct record of variability in the Atlantic overturning to date and the only one at high latitudes.

The latest climate models predict the overturning circulation will slow down as greenhouse gases warm the planet and melting ice adds freshwater to the ocean. "Warm, freshwater is lighter and sinks less readily than cold, salty water," Willis explained.

For now, however, there are no signs of a slowdown in the circulation. "The changes we're seeing in overturning strength are probably part of a natural cycle," said Willis. "The slight increase in overturning since 1993 coincides with a decades-long natural pattern of Atlantic heating and cooling."

If or when the overturning circulation slows, the results are unlikely to be dramatic. "No one is predicting another ice age as a result of changes in the Atlantic overturning," said Willis. "Even if the overturning was the Godzilla of climate 12,000 years ago, the climate was much colder then. Models of today's warmer conditions suggest that a slowdown would have a much smaller impact now.

"But the Atlantic overturning circulation is still an important player in today's climate," Willis added. "Some have suggested cyclic changes in the overturning may be warming and cooling the whole North Atlantic over the course of several decades and affecting rainfall patterns across the United States and Africa, and even the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic."

With their ability to observe the Atlantic overturning at high latitudes, Willis said, satellite altimeters and the Argo array are an important complement to the mooring and ship-based measurements currently being used to monitor the overturning at lower latitudes. "Nobody imagined that this large-scale circulation could be captured by these global observing systems," said Willis. "Their amazing precision allows us to detect subtle changes in the ocean that could have big impacts on climate."

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov.

JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.


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NASA’s Grace Sees Rapid Spread in Greenland Ice Loss

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Changes in Greenland's ice mass as measured by NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission between September 2005 (left) and September 2008 (right)A new international study finds that ice losses from Greenland's ice sheet, which have been increasing over the past decade in its southern region, are now spreading rapidly up its northwest coast.

The researchers, including Isabella Velicogna, jointly of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California, Irvine, compared data from the JPL-built and managed Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace) mission with continuous GPS measurements made from long-term sites on bedrock on the ice sheet's edges. The Grace and GPS data gave the researchers monthly averages of crustal uplift caused by ice mass loss. They found that the acceleration in ice loss began moving up the northwest coast of Greenland in late 2005. The authors speculate the dramatic ice mass losses on Greenland's northwest coast are caused by some of the big glaciers in the region sliding downhill faster and dumping more ice into the sea.

"These changes on the Greenland ice sheet are happening fast, and we are definitely losing more mass than we had anticipated," says Velicogna. "We also are seeing this trend in Antarctica, a sign that warming temperatures really are having an effect on ice in Earth's cold regions."

The NASA/National Science Foundation-funded study was led by Shfaqat Abbas Khan of the Denmark Technical Institute's National Space Institute in Copenhagen. Other participating institutions included the University of Colorado at Boulder and Ohio State University, Columbus.

Link for more information:

http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2010/2010-07.shtml

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