Global Warming Can Be Fun

Back for the afternoon breakout sessions…

Peter Frumhoff, Union of Concerned Scientists
Climate Change in the Northeast

UCS has created Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA).

Collaboration between UCS and >40 experts to develop assessment of climate change impacts.

Two scenarios in analysis through 2100.

Documents are available.

History: annual temps in New England have warmed 2 degrees since 1970. Plants are changing, etc, and it’s consistent with projections.
They’re trying to downscale global projections to the regional level to get microclimate assessments. Global grid cells are hundreds of miles across, they’re trying to bring it down to a much finer scale.

Ton of from IPCC. Tried to use two projections in particular — A1FI to B1. A1FI is fossil reliance, B1 is rapid transition to alternatives.

Projecting changes: seasonal and annual temps, heat index, heatwaves, precip and winter snow, extreme precip and storms, hydrology, timing of seasons, ocean temps and sealevel rise.

Core findings: they took projections back into the past to see how they “predict the past” so as to have more confidence in the future. They seem pretty good.

A1FI path (high one) shows a 10-12 degree increase by 2100 (!). Even the lower path (B1) we’re looking at a 5 degree increase.

Extreme heat: Boston today has average 1 day per summer over 100 degrees. By the end of the century, that could be 6 days under the low path, and 24 days under the high path.

Hartford is worse. A month a year over 100 degrees.

Precipitation is much more variable than temperature, but in general, precipitation rises in New England with rising temperatures, but much more of it falls as rain rather than snow. Under warming path, area getting more than 30 days a year of at least some snow on the ground will be limited to Adirondacks, White Mountains, and northern Maine.

Precipitation will be less frequent but more intense; more extreme. Bigger, more destructive storms. And increasing drought during the summer. Summer rainfall won’t change much, less snowpack, so result is lower soil moisture and higher evaporation. Projection shows short term droughts annually under higher path.

Ocean temperatures also rising. One degree warming since 1900 in Boothbay Harbor, ME already. Expected is 5 degrees under lower path, 8 degrees under higher path. Examining effects on lobster and cod.

Sea level rise: highly uncertain, but even conservative projections show 4-21 inches under low scenario, high projection is 8-33 inches before 2100. Does NOT include knowledge of new rates of deglaciation in Greenland and West Antarctica - may be much worse than expected.

Conclusions: climate is already changing. Over the next few decades, similar changes expected under all scenarios. There’s inertia in the system and we can’t stop ‘em. Today’s choices affect mid-century. By then, most changes greater under higher scenario. By late century, under higher scenario most changes are twice those under lower path.

Coming soon, reports on agriculture, forests, coastline, marine, public health, recreation, and suggested solutions regarding mitigation and adaptation.

Some changes are unavoidable, but the extent will depend on the choices we make today. The scenarios talked about are not the limits — not the ceiling, not the floor. Just a set of assumptions. Higher scenario could definitely be worse. Other scenario is not a limit either — we could also do better.

Reductions on the order of 80% below 2000 levels by 2050 (3% per year) can keep emissions below the lower scenario described there. If we wait to the end of the decade, we have to make the 3% solution into a 4% solution.

The Northeast can be viewed as the 7th largest climate CO2 effect in the world. And per-capita, we’re really bad. We’re a large player in the problem! We can have a big impact.

More stuff on the web.

Q: What about drought? Did I read it right that we could be affecting water tables? Lawn watering, etc.
A: Analysis shows short-term droughts, but not long-term.

Q: Your data based on extrapolation from global models, and that’s uncertain. Can you trust the extrapolation? Example: cloud cover.
A: We used multiple models and tried to factor out uncertainties because different models differ. We do show uncertainty in the detailed papers. Our confidence in the results are pretty high, because we’ve tested against the recent past. Even though the models are based on global historical climate data, we’re testing against local results and they work pretty well. The greatest uncertainty is in our own behavior — that far outweighs uncertainty in the models.

Q: What’s your communications strategy?
A: We’re trying to make it accessible to nontechnical audiences, spend as much time as possible talking to people across the range of constituencies and policy communities. Just gave a briefing to many agencies about this, we’re trying to find opportunities to connect the dots to people who can take it further. Full assessment will be out in the spring and they want to take it much further then. Very pleased with feedback.

Kerry Emanuel, MIT Prof. of Atmospheric Science
New England Hurricanes and Global Warming

Focus on hurricanes. We do have a problem and how might it evolve?

Severe hurricanes: 1635, 1815, 1938; several somewhat less severe (2 in 1954)

Providence goes underwater in bad hurricane.

NE Hurricanes tend to move very quickly — they have to move fast to get here before they die. 1938 was so powerful it was visible on Alaskan seismographs.

South Shore of Long Island was wiped out in 1938; it *will* happen again, regardless of global warming.

You can look into the climate record of the past and see dates of hurricanes. There seem to be many more of them in recent times. You can correlate hurricane rates roughly to ocean temperatures in the key latitudes of the Atlantic (there are physical reasons for this), and hurricane average power is almost perfectly correlated. Basically, when the ocean temps rise in Atlantic severity of hurricanes goes up (note: not true around the whole world, this is Atlantic only). And Atlantic ocean temperature is directly tied to the Northern Hemisphere average surface temperature.

The Atlantic IS special…but it’s not that special when we talk about average temperature.

There are four climate forcings:

• Greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, etc)
• Air pollution — but lifetime of that is only about 2 weeks, and so they stay concentrated around their sources. Whereas greenhouse gases live 10,000 years.
• Natural forcings: volcanoes, solar. Random phenomena, cool the planet somewhat.

He used to be skeptical — now he isn’t. Almost everyone is very worried.

GREAT graph showing the projections of our behavior from the natural forcings only — and you can’t explain our climate without the human forcings.

What does it mean for hurricanes?

If you stabilize our climate at 720 ppm (twice current value), you end up doubling the number of hurricanes at any given intensity. Annual probability of hurricanes near Boston also doubles.

We’ll have quiet years when El Nino is present. Same with volcanic eruptions. But it’s something to worry about.

Q: Does melting ice caps cool the oceans? And is there a way to harness the power of hurricanes?
A: North Atlantic doesn’t seem to be warming up. Possibly because of melting effects, it slows the circulation of atlantic conveyor. It doesn’t have much to do with hurricanes. Power in one hurricane is 2E13 watts, which coincidentally is the same as the US consumption. It also produces an amount of fresh water that’s similar to the global human rate of consumption. But we have no way to harness this.

Q: Permafrost Methane?
A: That and other items are all threshold events (”surprises”) that are not really dealt with in most climate models. These models are conservative in that sense.

Q: Please clarify the effects of El Nino and eruptions? Do they dampen global warming?
A: They don’t dampen global warming. El Nino affects wind shear, which dampens the ability of hurricanes to grow. We don’t know what El Nino will do regarding global warming (increase, decrease?). Aerosols increase upper atmosphere temps and decrease surface temps, which decreases hurricanes — but it’s statistical! Hurricane Andrew occurred right after Pinatubo.

Q: Data is result of ad hoc work that’s not well distributed; how do we manage this on a more sophisticated level and reflect to the detailed community level?
A: US Global Change Research Act of 1990 — mandates assessments of global climate change by governments. Report released in 2000. Intended to be nationwide, scaled to region, federally supported efforts to provide information at local scale about vulnerabilities to inform decision making. It has not been followed up on. Mandates every four years, but that may not be realistic. Hopefully work can be translated into support for restarting a serious federal effort around both adaptation and mitigation.

Q: Is there a tipping point? Will we see rapid change?
A: By and large, changes will be gradual. But we don’t know about some things like whether the Greenland ice sheet could do something irreversable (or methane release). From the broader perspective, even gradual projections are much harder to solve if we wait a decade before we do it. If we don’t act quickly we will be locking in changes we really don’t want to pass on to the next generation. Ambitious but achievable today may become too ambitious and unachievable tomorrow.

Q: Methane tipping point: doesn’t it seem extremely likely or even certain? Why isn’t it accounted for? How could it be a wildcard?
A: Great deal of uncertainty about the size of the inventory, but not much uncertainty about the fact that it’ll be released.

, MIT
CO2 Capture and Storage underground

Talking about burying it, not dissolving it or storing it in plants and trees.

Is it feasible? Yes. We know how to do all the pieces. We capture it and inject it today (to extract oil)

Why don’t we do it then? It’s almost always cheaper to emit than to sequester. We don’t have carbon policies, so there’s no economic reason yet. If we have the policy, it could be worth it.

Try to understand the scale. It’s ENORMOUS — no one tech can do it.

Total CO2 = Population x GDP/pop x J/GDP x CO2/J

GDP/pop is standard of living
J/GDP is energy intensity
CO2/J is carbon intensity

Energy intensity is not just how efficient you are. How about your industry? Steel, paper are expensive, light industry is lower intensity.

Carbon intensity reflects your fuel mix. Coal releases most CO2, then oil, then gas, then renewables.

We can apply growth rates to all terms to see what happens to the graph.

From 1949 to 2003, see DOE report — average annual change in US population is 1.14%/year pretty straight (dropping slightly).

Standard of living goes up about 2.17% / year

Energy intensity drops about -1.33% / year. (Yay, tech). Bad news is that we keep our old tech longer, such as keeping old refrigerators around.

Carbon intensity drops about 0.33%/year. (.2 of that is nuclear plants, but they’re going away within 20 years). Fossil mix was dropping, but starting to rise again. Hydro fraction is dropping over time.

Add ‘em up, and you get a net increase of about 1.6% a year. Hasn’t changed much over time.

IPCC special report mitigation portfolio: “The Third Assessment Report indicates that no single technology option will provide all the emission reductions needed to achieve stabilization. We are going to need a portfolio.”

Portfolio:
* CO2 mitigation:
* Efficiency
* Supply/demand

Decarbonization:
* Lower C/H ratio — coal is 1 C to 1 H, oil is 1 C to 2 H, gas is 1 C to 4 H; more energy per unit of C
* Nuclear
* Renewables

Sequestration:
* Direct (capture)
* Indirect (biological)

Reality of fossil fuels

Reliable inexpensive energy, cornerstone for world economy
Fossil fuel are dominant energy source and will dominate for next 50-100 years
Trillions in infrastructure
85% market share and rising
Fossil fuels are largest source of gases
Don’t believe we’re running out — running out is not a good solution to climate change

US CO2 emissions: 39% electric, 32% transportation, industry 18%, buildings 11%

Electricity generation: 50% coal, 17% gas, 20% nuke, 7% hydro, 3% oil, 2% other

That coal generates 85% of the CO2 emitted for electric generation.

Energy industry is very slow to change.

Coal is cheap and abundant (but New England is different).

Over a third of the CO2 in the country comes from coal plants that provide cheap electricity. Electricity doesn’t come much from coal in New England.

Pollution from coal is dropping, they’re handling that sort of emissions pretty effectively. Coal use rises, but emissions are falling.

How can we reconcile it?

Population survey showed that environment in general raising awareness, but climate change is now 50% labeled as a key environmental concern. % saying it’s a serious problem went from 20% to 33%, take action now from 42% to 39%. 71% said fed gov’t should do more.

“Doing something” and “doing enough” are two different issues.

There’s one coal power plant being built in China is about 1 every 5 days. They’re doing about a gigawatt a week of new construction. US has 650 GW online now.

How does it work?

Post-combustion:
Coal power plants — acid-base reaction. CO2 is about 15% of the volume, most of it is nitrogen. You can extract about 90% of the CO2 from the stream. Uses 25-30% of the energy from the generation to do it. It’s expensive.

You can also do oxyfuel combustion. If you eliminate the nitrogen, you don’t need to post-separate but you do need to separate the oxygen from the nitrogen up front. Higher capture ratio, but still expensive.

Almost all power plants are combustion. Only about 4 gasification (IGCC — integrated gasification combined cycle) power plants. Mix oxygen and coal to create a “syngas”, which takes the coal and generates CH -> CO + H2 (”syngas”). You clean it up before you burn it. Much easier to clean up and has smaller equipment. Use a “combined cycle” gas turbine followed by a steam turbine. In theory more efficient, but the integration limits operational effectiveness. More efficient, cleaner, but more expensive.

Syngas could be used for polygeneration, which could turn it into “Fischer-Tropes” diesel.

To burn it, do: CO + H2O => CO2 + H2 — easier to capture the CO2, burn the hydrogen.

Relative cost of electricity:

                     without capture       with capture
Post-combustion         1                     1.61
Oxyfuel combustion                            1.46
Precombustion           1.07                  1.36

This doesn’t include the storage cost, but that’s relatively cheap

Mitigation costs:
$/ton of CO2 avoided

Post combustion:            45
Oxyfuel                     35
Precombustion               29

Assuming transport/storage of $5/ton.

Current US mitigation cap is $7 / ton. This isn’t enough!

Policymakers often quote numbers per ton of carbon instead of tons of CO2; multiplier is 44/12 (3.67). $30 per ton of CO2 is $100 per ton of carbon.

Lots of proposed plants for capture and storage, a couple in US, Germany, Scotland, Norway…

It’s premature to select one technology — we need to pursue all of them.

Significant deployment starts at $100/ton of carbon

Could contribute 15-55% of CO2 reductions

Cut mitigation costs by 33% if we use these techniques.

Storage: several ways to store, usually supercritical. Oil/gas wells that have been depleted, or use the CO2 to push the oil out. You can also store in saline areas.

We do it all the time now for different reasons. We also have a network of pipelines.

Key messages: there are 2000 Gigatons of CO2 capacity, possibly larger
Retention times in millions of years
Likely to have less than 1% leakage after 1000 years.

There’s no use for the stuff.

It’s not a silver bullet, but part of the portfolio. Two challenges:
Reduce costs associated with capture
Reduce uncertainties associated with scale.