Explaining Climate: What Rockström Said! Sometimes in the struggle to convey the seriousness and, above all, the immediacy of the threat of climate change, one runs across a speaker or writer that simply causes the reaction, “what he said!” This was definitely the case for me on July 12 in Sweden when Johan Rockström, former […]
The “Road to Paris” Goes through Cryosphere With the Bonn UNFCCC climate negotiations taking place next month, the phrase “road to Paris” is the theme of countless policy forums and media coverage. For ICCI, that “road” focuses on cryosphere – but increasingly, science is telling us that any path towards a new climate agreement in […]
Summer Forecast: Hot, with Frequent Fires Sometimes ICCI gets the question of how open field and forest burning, seeming quite far from the Arctic or other regions, can have such an impact at higher latitudes (or in the Himalayas, Andes or other mountain regions, on mountain glaciers and snowpack). One explanation, of course, is the […]
Conservation Agriculture: Conserving Cryosphere “The soil does not belong to me, it belongs to every living thing on this planet.” Conservation agriculture pioneer and author Carlos Crovetto, Chequen Farm, in the Andean foothills of the Concepción region of Chile. I recently have become a lurker at agricultural conferences, examining direct-seed farm equipment, cover crop opportunities […]
The below remarks are taken from the opening remarks by ICCI Director and Founder Pam Pearson at ICCI’s December 11 UNFCCC side event at COP-20 in Lima, Peru. Cryosphere. ICCI sometimes gets a hard time from colleagues wondering why in the world we have a word that no one understands as the name of our […]
Lima: Just a Start The annual Framework Climate Convention negotiations will take place from December 1-12 in Lima, Peru. ICCI as always will be there to make certain that delegates hear the latest on cryosphere developments, with a presence that includes an information booth as well as a UNFCCC side event on December 11 (welcome!). […]
Track Zero: Making Two (Cryosphere: Five!) Degrees Real In Copenhagen in 2009, one of the few victories was a commitment by global leaders to the “two degree goal”: holding the rise in temperature to 2°C (3.8°F) or less globally. A major principle: yet ever since, governments and their climate negotiators have tried unsuccessfully to put […]
Open Burning and the Arctic: An Issue of Resilience By Gail Stevenson, Russia Program Manager Open burning in northern Eurasia is a significant source of black carbon (BC) to the Arctic lower atmosphere and snow surface. The Arctic Council estimates that it is the largest single source of BC impacting the regional Arctic climate. In […]
The Cryosphere Imperative: Why Paris 2015 Must Succeed ICCI in coming months will focus much of its resources on raising the level of ambition for the Paris 2015 climate change agreement, from the point of view of a “cryosphere imperative.” This blog defines that “imperative.” Subsequent months will look at the different elements, such as […]
Why The President Should Say “No” to Keystone The following is taken from a letter sent to President Barack Obama by ICCI founder and Executive Director Pam Pearson, urging the President to deny approval to the Keystone pipeline: I founded and lead a group focused on climate change in cryosphere regions, such as the Himalayas […]
For the December IceBlog, below is the prepared statement from ICCI Director Pam Pearson to the environment and foreign ministers gathered at COP-19 in Warsaw on November 21 for the ”Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s” (CCAC) High Level Assembly. (The reference to the Phillipines connects to the decision by Phillipine lead negotiator Yeb Sano to […]
Message from the Cryosphere The On Thin Ice report, co-produced by ICCI and the World Bank, is a message of caution, and of hope. Caution because rapid changes in the earth’s regions of snow and ice – the “cryosphere” – daily increase the risk of changes to our global environment: changes not seen in the […]
An “Interpretation for the Rest of Us” of the Latest IPCC Report – Cryosphere Sections On September 27, Working Group 1 (WG1) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its Summary for Policymakers after over a week of negotiations between scientists and governments on the final text in Stockholm. This is part of […]
The Cryosphere Ice Watch Every year about this time, my thoughts become distinctly maudlin. For much of human history and in many cultures still today, the death watch was a staple of the end of human life: family and friends gathering at the bedside for days and even weeks, sitting in witness and support with […]
Tragedy in the Himalayas A tragedy occurred last month in the mountainous regions of northern India, western Nepal and Tibet, when monsoon rains hit unexpectedly early and hard. Rainfall from June 14-17 totaled 375% more than the normal monsoon benchmark at the event’s epicenter, resulting in flash floods and landslides along the Mandakini River, which […]