Author's Three-Year Global Trek Finds Warming Everywhere - Observer

[hatrack]

At the end of our weather
Mark Lynas
Sunday, October 5, 2003
The Observer

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I had been in Tuvalu for only two days when the first puddle of water appeared at the side of the small airstrip; more puddles soon joined it. The sea had welled up suddenly through thousands of tiny holes in this atoll's bedrock of coral. People gathered to watch the water flow down paths, around palm trees and into back gardens. Within an hour, it was knee-deep in some places. One of Tuvalu's increasingly regular submergences had begun. A similar thing occurs most winters in Venice, but Venice has 1.6 billion (ed. pounds) to spend on a syste of protective floodgates. Tuvalu is one of the world's smallest and most obscure nations: 10,000 people, scattered across nine tiny coral atolls. Sea-level rise here is a crisis of national survival: very little of Tuvalu is much more than 20 inches above the Pacific and its coral bedrock is so porous that no amount of coastal protection can save it.

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Look outside your window. Your garden is moving south by 20 metres a day. It sounds extreme until you work it out: the 1990s in central England were 0.5C warmer than the 1960-90 average, equivalent to a shift north in the previous climatic zone of 75 kilometres in 10 years. Termites have invaded the south of the country . . . Horse chestnut trees leaf two weeks early. Crocuses flower in mid-Januiary, when they should remain dormant until March. Winter floods and summer droughts (and heatwaves) mean extinction for many familiar suburban and countryside species. Water-stressed beech woods on the Chilterns could be the first to follow elms into the history books. Oaks will also be losers. Winners will be invasive, adaptable species like sycamore and Japanese knotweed.

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I went snorkeling with Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, one of the world's most distinguished marine biologists, who pointed out which corals had died, and which might yet manage to survive. Once we were out of the water, he explained that coral dies when sea-water temperatures pass the tolerance levels of the coral polyps, which then eject the algae that normally live deep within their bodies and provide food. For a few days, the corals can cope, but if the water stays too warm for too long, then they die in massive numbers. Hoegh-Guldberg has begun to move beyond the nuanced language of science; he feels the crisis is too urgent. In his view, the dead and dying coral is probably 'the most serious human impact on an ecosystem ever, certainly for the last 2,000 years.' 1998 was the most disastrous so far, with great bleaching and death of tropical reefs from the Caribbean to the Maldives, and 90 per cent mortality rates in some areas. Hoegh Guldberg estimates that, overall, a sixth of tropical corals had been destroyed. 'If we lost that proportion of the rainforests in a single year, people would be screaming.'

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Not far from Wuwei, two deserts are spreding towards each other. Zhang, an official with the regional water bureau, pointed them out as we drove east, over the route of the old Silk Road, to the ancient oasis town of Minqin. The left-hand side of the road was already mostly sand. On the right, beyond a narrow strip of greenery, the dunes of the second desert were shimmering through the heat haze. Once they joined up, Minqin, formerly one of the most productive agricultural areas in China, would be cut off. According to government figures, more than 2,500 square kilometres of land in China turns into desert every year, providing fuel for the increasingly strong dust storms which roar down off the inner Mongolian plains every spring, into Beijing and the south. Chinese dust-storms can be killers; one 'black wind' in May 1993 left 85 people dead, and the corrosive action of the wind was enough to strip the tops off tarmacked roads."

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Guardian UK

[donsu]

1. kick

nt

[barbaraann]

2. Things have certainly changed here in Western Washington.

We used to have endless gloom and rain. Now I think we have some of the best weather in the country.

[headlouse]

3. obvious global warming in SF too

It has been a really odd muggy and hot summer here in San Francisco. while it's cooled down now, for a while it was hot and humid. I have never experienced such humid weather in the 11 years that I've lived her.