It’s that time again - welcome to another ScholarTribe climate briefing! In the news this week: India and Pakistan continue to be exposed to a severe and prolonged heatwave (link); the island nation of Vanuatu gathers momentum to receive legal protection from human-caused climate change (link); and Coldplay have bizarrely decided to partner with an oil firm in their efforts to reduce their touring emissions (link). If only The Scientist had been around to ask first…
Anyway, in this week’s research news:
💨 A study into airborne microplastics
🌏 The unsung endeavours of the Global South in reaching net zero
🏴 How Scottish peatlands may play an important role as a carbon store
⛈ …and the distinction between weather and climate!
Something’s in the air
It’s well known that microplastics have been swimming around in our water systems and oceans for decades now. At current rates, the level of plastic pollution is set to reach 80 million tonnes per year by 2040. To put that into perspective that’s the equivalent of 10 kg, or 2 household cats, per person per year.
This analogy is of course inaccurate, as some countries produce and consume vastly more plastic than others. The problem, which again is already well understood, is that ocean currents mean that the pollution has global coverage, no matter where it originates from.
A new study from the Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Reseach suggests that there is more at play here than just ocean currents. They show that wind, too, can transport these particles great distances - and much faster than water, over timescales of days rather than months.
Putting the record straight
The Global South has historically fallen under heavy judgement from the climate community, due to their tardiness in reaching emissions targets (e.g. India pledging to reach net zero by 2070). However, according to Frischmann et al.’s new paper in Nature Climate Change, they are putting in more effort than they get credit for, “...despite the socioeconomic cards stacked against them”.
The paper explores many examples of climate action and delivery from the Global South, in areas of food and agriculture, transportation, energy and investment. What is particularly striking is how quickly the transport infrastructure in India, Brazil and China has become electrified, as a result of relatively few people in those countries owning cars. The authors suggest that the Global North can learn from these actions, and work more closely with the Global South to meet the Paris Agreement.
I can feel the peat
Scottish bogs are the new face of carbon capture, according to David Segal writing in the NY Times. I won’t say more, as this is a beautifully formatted article that’s much better if you just dive in and read it!
Weather ≠ Climate
As somewho has worked in climate research, a concept I often find myself explaining (normally in a pub somewhere) is what the difference is between weather and climate. Indeed, just last weekend I was in the Royal Oak in Oxford, talking to someone about the differences in predicting the two.
So to concisely explain the distinction: climate is the condition of the atmosphere that we expect to see, based on an average of the last 30 years of data. The weather is what we actually get. So to put it another way - if a particular summer was abnormally wet, that would just be an example of the weather being wetter than the usual climate, and it wouldn’t be evidence of climate change. If summers gradually became wetter over a 30-year period however, then the climate would indeed be changing.
So what about the difference in predicting the two? My friend in the Royal Oak was wondering how we can predict changes to the climate in 2050, when we can’t even predict the weather two weeks in advance. The answer to this comes down to what we are actually calculating when we predict climate and weather. In the case of weather, we look at things like where clouds are going to be, where it’s going to rain, and what the wind might do. These are all quantities which are predictable in the short term, but fall victim to chaos in the long term and are therefore unpredictable. Climate prediction isn’t concerned with these mundane affairs, and instead looks at global energy balance, ocean-atmosphere feedbacks, and generally broader variables.
Aw I'm so damn stoked for this climate thing