lobal warming is likely to produce a significant increase in the intensity and rainfall of hurricanes in coming decades, according to the most comprehensive computer analysis done so far.

By the 2080's, seas warmed by rising atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases could cause a typical hurricane to intensify about an extra half step on the five-step scale of destructive power, says the study, done on supercomputers at the Commerce Department's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. And rainfall up to 60 miles from the core would be nearly 20 percent more intense.

Other computer modeling efforts have also predicted that hurricanes will grow stronger and wetter as a result of global warming. But this study is particularly significant, independent experts said, because it used half a dozen computer simulations of global climate, devised by separate groups at institutions around the world. The long-term trends it identifies are independent of the normal lulls and surges in hurricane activity that have been on display in recent decades.

The study was published online on Tuesday by The Journal of Climate and can be found at www.gfdl.noaa.gov/reference/bibliography/2004/tk0401.pdf.

The new study of hurricanes and warming "is by far and away the most comprehensive effort" to assess the question using powerful computer simulations, said Dr. Kerry A. Emanuel, a hurricane expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has seen the paper but did not work on it. About the link between the warming of tropical oceans and storm intensity, he said, "This clinches the issue."

Dr. Emanuel and the study's authors cautioned that it was too soon to know whether hurricanes would form more or less frequently in a warmer world. Even as seas warm, for example, accelerating high-level winds can shred the towering cloud formations of a tropical storm.

But the authors said that even if the number of storms simply stayed the same, the increased intensity would substantially increase their potential for destruction.

Experts also said that rising sea levels caused by global warming would lead to more flooding from hurricanes - a point underlined at the United Nations this week by leaders of several small island nations, who pleaded for more attention to the potential for devastation from tidal surges.

The new study used four climate centers' mathematical approximations of the physics by which ocean heat fuels tropical storms.

With almost every combination of greenhouse-warmed oceans and atmosphere and formulas for storm dynamics, the results were the same: more powerful storms and more rainfall, said Robert Tuleya, one of the paper's two authors. He is a hurricane expert who recently retired after 31 years at the fluid dynamics laboratory and teaches at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va. The other author was Dr. Thomas R. Knutson of the Princeton laboratory.

Altogether, the researchers spawned around 1,300 virtual hurricanes using a more powerful version of the same supercomputer simulations that generates Commerce Department forecasts of the tracks and behavior of real hurricanes.

Dr. James B. Elsner, a hurricane expert at Florida State University who was among the first to predict the recent surge in Atlantic storm activity, said the new study was a significant step in examining the impacts of a warmer future.

But like Dr. Emanuel, he also emphasized that the extraordinary complexity of the oceans and atmosphere made any scientific progress "baby steps toward a final answer."

Filed at 9:51 a.m. ET

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian government approved the Kyoto Protocol Thursday, giving decisive support to the long-delayed climate change treaty that should allow it to come into force worldwide.

The controversial pact will now be passed to the Kremlin-dominated parliament for ratification.

President Vladimir Putin's government acted despite worries by many officials who say the 1997 U.N. pact, which orders cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming, would harm the economy and not protect the environment.

The European Union hailed Moscow's decision and seized the moment to urge Washington, whose rejection of the pact in 2001 left it dependent on Russia's approval, to rethink its position.

``The fate of the Kyoto protocol depends on Russia. If we... rejected ratification, we would become the ones to blame (for its failure),'' Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov told the cabinet meeting.

Russia, which accounts for 17 percent of world emissions, has held the key to Kyoto's success or failure since the United States pulled out.

The pact becomes binding once it has been ratified by 55 percent of the signatories which must, among them, account for 55 percent of developed countries' carbon dioxide emissions.

Kyoto has surpassed the first requirement as 122 nations have ratified it. But without Russia they account for only 44 percent of total emissions.

Russia, a signatory of the pact, initially prevaricated on ratification. But in May Putin backed it in exchange for EU agreement on the terms of Moscow's admission to the World Trade Organization.

``We warmly welcome the decision,'' a European Commission spokesman said in Brussels. He added that the EU now encouraged Washington to review its attitude to the pact. Environmentalists and experts were equally positive.

``Now he (Putin) can go down in history as the savior (of Kyoto),'' said Benito Mueller, an expert on the issue for British-based think-tank the Royal Institute for International Affairs.

BATTLES STILL AHEAD

However, Thursday's meeting left unanswered the question of when parliament could practically debate ratification. Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov, who was absent from the cabinet meeting, predicted a tough battle in the State Duma, the lower house.

``The discussion on the subject is open and debate is likely to be difficult,'' Fradkov was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying on a visit to the Netherlands.

Proponents of Kyoto say that apart from contributing to environmental security worldwide, Russia would be encouraged to upgrade its industries to match new standards and could earn billions of dollars selling excess quotas for gas emissions.

But opponents said Russia was likely to be the loser.

``The Academy of Science confirms its position that the protocol is not effective and gives us no advantages,'' the head of the academy's institute on climate change and ecology, Yuri Izrael, told the cabinet meeting.

Putin's economic adviser Andrei Illarionov warned that new environmental standards would cost industry more and undermine the Kremlin's plan to double gross domestic product in 10 years.

``Many economic calculations show that if the protocol is ratified, the doubling of GDP becomes impossible in the next 10 years,'' Illarionov said. ``This will require changes in the social and economic policies.''

But the influential head of Duma's international affairs committee, Konstantin Kosachev, said that, despite differences, parliament had the means to ratify Kyoto smoothly now that the government had expressed its will.

``There seems to be a consensus over the political importance of Kyoto, while economic and ecological consequences are the issues causing trouble,'' he told reporters.

``If the government decided the pact should be ratified, it must have thought that the latter two are not that important.''

There is no official time limit for the cabinet to send a ratification request to the Duma. Kosachev said that if it was quick in coming, his committee could consider it by the end of the year to prepare for a full-session debate.

Interfax said ministries linked to the environment had been given three months to work out practical measures arising from Russia's obligations.

Government officials have said that Russia needs changes in environmental legislation, new regulations on measuring emissions and rules for trading quotas.

OSCOW, Sept. 30 - The long-delayed Kyoto Protocol on global warming overcame its last critical hurdle to taking effect around the world on Thursday when Russia's cabinet endorsed the treaty and sent it to Parliament. The treaty, the first to require cuts in emissions linked to global warming, would take effect 90 days after Parliament's approval, a formality that was widely expected.

The United States has rejected the treaty and will not be bound by its restrictions. But the treaty, which has already been ratified by 120 countries will take effect if supporters include nations accounting for at least 55 percent of all industrialized countries' 1990-level emissions. The only way for it to cross that threshold was with ratification by Russia. In 1990, the United States accounted for 36.1 percent of emissions from industrialized countries, and Russia 17.4 percent.

The protocol was dormant over the last two years as Russia considered its merits and sought concessions from the European Union, the treaty's main proponent.

The treaty is widely considered a milestone of international environmental diplomacy. It is the first agreement that sets binding restrictions on emissions of heat-trapping gases that, for now, remain an unavoidable result of almost any facet of modern life, including driving a car and running a power plant. The main source of the dominant gas, carbon dioxide, is burning coal and oil.

But many specialists say that, at the same time, the protocol is just the tiniest initial step toward limiting the human influence on the climate, given that its targets are small and that the United States will not be bound by its terms. China, a major polluter that did sign the treaty, is not bound by its restrictions because it is considered a developing country.

The treaty would require 36 industrialized countries to reduce their collective emissions of six greenhouse gases by 2012 to more than five percent below 1990 levels, with different targets negotiated for individual countries.

By one calculation, it would take more than 40 times the emissions reductions required under the treaty to prevent a doubling of the pre-industrial concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in this century.

Still, the decision by the government of President Vladimir V. Putin to endorse the treaty was "cause for celebration," said Klaus Toepfer, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

He acknowledged that the Kyoto accord was "only the first step in a long journey towards stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions." But Mr. Toepfer added that Russia's move sent a vital signal to developing countries, which supported the treaty only if it excused them from reductions, and the small number of wealthy nations that still oppose curbs on the gases that cause global warming, most notably the United States.

"I hope other nations, some of whom, like Russia, have maybe been in the past reluctant to ratify, will now join us in this truly global endeavor," he said.

In Washington, Harlan L. Watson, the chief State Department negotiator on climate issues, said Russia's decision would not change the Bush administration's rejection of the treaty. Mr. Watson said the United States would continue to focus on long-term research to find new nonpolluting sources of energy or ways to limit the buildup of carbon dioxide.

A spokesman for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, who has criticized the Bush administration's position on global warming, was quick to seize on Russia's decision. "George Bush made a catastrophic mistake when he declared a decade's work of 160 nations dead on arrival instead of working with our allies to fix the treaty and lead on global warming,'' said the spokesman, David Wade. "We're still paying a heavy price for his unilateralism."

One more step is required in Russia for the pact to take effect - approval by the Parliament, or Duma. But the body is dominated by supporters of Mr. Putin, so approval is expected, even though Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov predicted a "difficult debate." The treaty would take effect 90 days after the Duma approval.

Mr. Putin made no public statement on Thursday. His top economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, who had opposed the pact, said that the decision to endorse it had been made for political reasons and that the task now would be to try to minimize what he called the treaty's negative consequences for Russia.

He said compliance would slow Russia's economic growth and make it impossible to meet Mr. Putin's stated goal of doubling the gross domestic product within a decade.

"It's not a decision we are making with pleasure," Mr. Illarionov said, the Interfax news agency reported.

The European Union had pressed Russia for more than a year to accept the pact. In Brussels, Romano Prodi, the president of the European Commission, said "President Putin has sent a strong signal of his commitment and sense of responsibility."

Mr. Illarionov had said the treaty was based on false and even deceptive scientific assumptions.

His views conflict with a broad international scientific consensus that the buildup of long-lived gases, which act like the panes in a greenhouse roof, is likely to disrupt weather patterns and water supplies and threaten coasts by raising sea levels.

German Gref, Russia's economic development minister, called the treaty "a progressive step" but said, "It will hardly be decisive in radically improving the environmental situation."

Breaking with Mr. Illarionov, Mr. Gref added that the treaty was unlikely to undermine Russia's economic growth.

In Washington, some lobbyists for American industries opposed to the treaty suggested there was a chance that Mr. Putin still opposed it and was planning for Parliament to reject it - as proof that he was not consolidating power.

But in Moscow, the mood among environmental activists was cautiously upbeat.

Vladimir Azkharov, director of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, a lobbying group, said the treaty "very, very probably" would be approved in parliament, although he said, "there is no guarantee."

President Bush summarily rejected the treaty in 2001, saying it would burden the economy by limiting use of fossil fuels and would unfairly exclude big developing countries from curbs on emissions. The Senate had long ago signaled its opposition for the same reasons.

China and other developing countries, while signing the treaty, only did so because it obligated established industrial powers to act first.

Last December, in what seemed a definitive rejection, Mr. Illarionov said Russia would not sign the treaty. In May, however, Mr. Putin promised to speed ratification, in a move widely interpreted as a concession to gain support from the European Union for Russia's bid to join the World Trade Organization. International environmental groups expressed satisfaction at the news.

"As the Earth is battered by increasing storms, floods and droughts, President Putin has brought us to a pivotal point in human history," Steve Sawyer, a climate campaigner for Greenpeace International, said. "The Bush administration is out in the cold and the rest of the world can move forward."

In a telephone interview, Fred Krupp, the president of Environmental Defense, said, "What is significant is that it will be a market signal heard around the world, a signal that we are moving into a carbon-constrained future."

The treaty, named for the Japanese city of Kyoto where it was negotiated in 1997, is an outgrowth of a 1992 pact, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, that was signed by Mr. Bush's father and under which countries agreed to strive to bring their emissions of the gases to 1990 levels by 2000.

By the mid-1990s, however, it was clear that the targets would not be met, leading to a new round of talks toward a binding protocol with firm targets and penalties.

Its basic architecture and targets were hastily negotiated in December 1997 in Kyoto. But momentum was lost after Mr. Bush rejected it and after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Some of its biggest weaknesses now stem from the long delays. Subsequent economic activity and rising emissions have threatened to put Europe and Japan, its main backers, out of compliance.

The treaty provides various strategies through which countries can reach their targets without actually reducing emissions at home. Investments can be made in poor countries to save forests, which absorb carbon dioxide, or introduce efficient technologies, which use less fuel.

It permits emissions trading, in which one country buys the right to emit from another that has already exceeded its targets for reducing emissions and has extra credits.

Prof. David G. Victor, a political scientist at Stanford and longtime student of the protocol, said Russia had nothing to lose by moving ahead, since it surpassed its Kyoto targets before they were set.

After the Russian economy collapsed with the fall of Communism, the country's greenhouse gas emissions fell far below 1990 levels, leaving it with a bonanza of tradable credits earned when it surpassed its targets for reducing emissions. For Europe this bundle of credits is a mixed blessing now, Mr. Victor said.

The European Union recently passed legislation creating an internal trading market under the protocol's terms, so that richer member states, like Britain, could get credit toward targets by investing in emissions-cutting projects in poorer, more polluted, ones, like Spain. But under the treaty's terms, Europe, Japan, and other industrialized participants can buy credits from Russia as well. If Russia now starts selling its credits to Europe, there will be little incentive for companies within the European Union to push ahead with plans to cut emissions that would be more costly, Mr. Victor said.

Seth Mydans reported from Moscow for this article, and Andrew C.Revkin from Washington.

From:  SCIENCE DAILY  http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Source:   The Earth Institute At Columbia University Date:   2004-10-08

Drought In The West Linked To Warmer Temperatures

Severe drought in western states in recent years may be linked to climate warming trends, according to new research led by scientists from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University to be posted October 7 on Science magazine's website, http://www.sciencemag.org. This research was supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Analyzing aridity in the western U.S. over the past 1,200 years, the study team, which also included scientists from the University of Arizona, University of Arkansas, and NOAA, found evidence suggesting that elevated aridity in the U.S. West may be a natural response to climate warming. "The Western United States is so vulnerable to drought, we thought it was important to understand some of the long-term causes of drought in North America," said lead author Dr. Edward R. Cook of the Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory's tree ring laboratory.

The study revealed that a 400-year-long period of elevated aridity and epic drought occurred in what is now the western U.S. during the period A.D. 900-1300. This corresponds broadly to the so-called "Medieval Warm Period," a time in which a variety of paleoclimate records indicate unusual warmth over much of the Northern Hemisphere. The authors of the new study argue that there are climate mechanisms involved that make warming climate conditions likely to lead to increased prevalence of drought in the western, interior region of North America.

Looking at implications for the future, the authors express concern. "Any trend towards warmer temperatures in the future could lead to a serious long-term increase in aridity over Western North America," they write in the paper.

Co-author Dr. David Meko of the University of Arizona tree ring lab notes that the drought that has gripped the western United States for the past four years "pales in comparison with some of the earlier droughts we see from the tree-ring record. What would really put a stress on society is decade-long drought."

"If warming over the tropical Pacific Ocean promotes drought over the western U.S., this is a potential problem for the future in a world that is increasingly subjected to greenhouse warming," Dr. Cook added.

The study's authors used tree ring records to reconstruct evidence of drought, and also looked at a number of independent drought indicators ranging from elevated charcoal in lake sediments to sand dune activation records. The team then used published climate model studies to explore mechanisms that link warming with aridity in the western U.S.

In addition to the paper in Science, they also used the data to create a CD-ROM called the North American Drought Atlas, the first of its kind, providing a history of drought on this continent. The atlas contains annual maps of reconstructed droughts over North America, an animation of those maps showing aridity over time, and a time series plot of each reconstruction with associated plots of calibrated and verification statistics. The North American Drought Atlas CD-ROM can be obtained by contacting Dr. Edward R. Cook at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (drdendro@ldeo.columbia.edu).

### The Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory is part of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, the world's leading academic center for the integrated study of Earth, its environment, and society. The Earth Institute builds upon excellence in the core disciplines–earth sciences, biological sciences, engineering sciences, social sciences and health sciences–and stresses cross-disciplinary approaches to complex problems. Through its research training and global partnerships, it mobilizes science and technology to advance sustainable development, while placing special emphasis on the needs of the world's poor. For more information please visit http://www.earth.columbia.edu.

This story has been adapted from a news release issued by The Earth Institute At Columbia University.

October 29, 2004
New York Times

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
 

October 30, 2004

By ANDREW C. REVKIN
 

BUENOS AIRES, Dec. 18 - Two weeks of negotiations at a United Nations conference here on climate change ended early Saturday with a weak pledge to start limited, informal talks on ways to slow down global warming, after the United States blocked efforts to begin more substantive discussions.

The main focus was to discuss the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, which goes into force on Feb. 16 and will require industrial nations to make substantial cuts in their emissions of so-called greenhouse gases. But another goal had been to draw the United States, which withdrew from the accord in 2001, back into discussions about ways to mitigate climate change after 2012, when the Kyoto agreement expires.

Governments that are already committed to reducing emissions under the Kyoto plan used diplomatic language to express their disappointment at the American position. Environmental groups, however, were more critical of what they characterized as obstructionism.

"This is a new low for the United States, not just to pull out, but to block other countries from moving ahead on their own path," said Jeff Fiedler, an observer representing the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council. "It's almost spiteful to say, 'You can't move ahead without us.' If you're not going to lead, then get out of the way."

Because the United States rejects the Kyoto accord, it cannot take part except as an observer in talks on global warming held under that format. It has, however, signed a broader 1992 convention on climate change that is based on purely voluntary measures, and the European Union and others had hoped to organize seminars within that framework.

But the United States maintains it is too early to take even that step, and initially insisted that "there shall be no written or oral report" from any seminars. In the end, all that could be achieved was an agreement to hold a single workshop next year to "exchange information" on climate change.

"We are very flexible, but not at all costs," said Pieter van Geel, state secretary of the environment for the Netherlands and president of the European Union delegation. "It must be a meaningful seminar" with "a report somewhere," he added. "These are very modest things when you start a discussion."

Delegations and observer groups also criticized what they described as an effort led by Saudi Arabia and supported by the United States to hamper approval of so-called adaptation assistance. That term refers to payments that richer countries would make, mostly to poor, low-lying island countries to help them cope with the impacts of climate change.

The group that would receive the aid includes Pacific Ocean states like Tuvalu, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia, and Caribbean nations like the Bahamas and Barbados. At a news conference here on Thursday, their representatives said rising sea levels, accelerated land erosion and more intense storms were already affecting their economic development.

But the issue was complicated by Saudi Arabia's insistence that the aid include compensation to oil-producing countries for any fall in revenues that may result from the reduction in the use of carbon fuels. The European Union, which had announced its intention to provide $400 million a year to an assistance fund, strongly opposed any such provision.

Harlan Watson, a senior member of the American delegation, would not specifically discuss the American position other than to say there are "always tos and fros in any negotiation." He described the results as "the most comprehensive adaptation package that has ever been completed," and "something that satisfied all parties."

The United States also stood virtually alone in challenging the scientific assumptions underlying the Kyoto Protocol. "Science tells us that we cannot say with any certainty what constitutes a dangerous level of warming, and therefore what level must be avoided," Paula Dobriansky, under secretary of state for global affairs and the leader of the American delegation, said in her remarks to the conference.

At a side meeting organized by insurance companies, however, concerns were expressed about rapidly rising payments resulting from more severe and frequent hurricanes, heat waves and flooding. Representatives of major European reinsurance companies described 2004 as "the costliest year for the insurance industry worldwide" and warned that worse is likely to come.

Thomas Loster, a climate expert at the Munich Re insurance group, estimated that the cost of disasters will rise to as much as $95 billion annually, compared to an average of $70 billion over the past decade. Experts here acknowledge that extreme weather patterns have always existed, but maintain that their frequency and intensity has been increasing because of global warming.

"There is more and more evidence building up that indicates that whatever is going on is not natural and is no longer within the realm of variability," said Alden Meyer, policy director of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Enough research has been done, especially in the Arctic, he added, to establish that "we are starting to see the impact of human interference" and "a clear pattern of human-induced climate change."

Those sharply different perceptions led to a clash even over what language should be used in discussing disaster relief. Bush administration emissaries opposed the use of the phrase "climate change," employed since the days of the first Bush administration, in favor of "climate variability," a much more nebulous term.