The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has produced a draft summary of a report that warns of a predicted increase in the number and intensity of extreme weather events.  As outlined below by Marlowe Hood for Agence France Presse, the 800-page report goes some way to addressing a subject largely untouched by their landmark 2007 report on climate change, and adds to the growing body of evidence outlining the potential security implications of a warmer planet.  Their findings, such as more frequent summer heat waves in Europe, and flooding in South Asia are supported by the findings of other climate monitors such as the UK Met Office Hadley Centre (2010).

The report gives weight to the argument for climate change mitigation out of concern for human security, with its most troubling conclusions predicting major shocks for regions already vulnerable and ill-equipped to provide for the security of their inhabitants, such as West Africa and South Asia.  It also cites the probability of extreme weather impacts as ‘very likely’ – at 90% or greater – thereby tackling some of the uncertainty faced by security planners.

Regions must brace for weather extremes: UN climate panel

By Marlowe Hood (AFP)

PARIS — Southern Europe will be gripped by fierce heatwaves, drought in North Africa will be more common, and small island states face ruinous storm surges from rising seas, according to a report by UN climate scientists.

The assessment is the most comprehensive probe yet by the 194-nation Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) into the impact of climate change on extreme weather events.

A 20-page draft “summary for policymakers” obtained by AFP says in essence that global warming will create weather on steroids.

It also notes that these amped-up events — cyclones, heat waves, diluvian rains, drought — will hit the world unevenly.

Subject to modification, the draft summary will be examined by governments at a six-day IPCC meeting starting on Monday in the Ugandan capital of Kampala.

In the worst scenario, human settlement in some areas could be wiped out, the report warns.

“If disasters occur more frequently and/or with greater magnitude, some local areas will become increasingly marginal as places to live or in which to maintain livelihoods,” it says.

“In such cases migration becomes permanent and could introduce new pressures in areas of relocation. For locations such as atolls, in some cases it is possible that many residents will have to relocate.”

Three years in the making, the underlying 800-page report synthesises thousands of recent, peer-reviewed scientific studies.

The authors expresses high confidence in some findings but stresses uncertainty in others, mainly due to lack of data.

They also emphasise that the vulnerability of human settlements depends as much or more on exposure, preparedness and the capacity to respond as it does on the raw power of Nature’s violent outburts.

Average global temperatures have risen by nearly 1.0 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, with forecasts for future warming ranging between an additional 1.0 C to 5.0 C (1.8-9.0 F) by 2100.

But these worldwide figures mask strong regional differences.

Among the findings:

— Western Europe is at risk from more frequent heat waves, in particular along the Mediterranean rim.

Record-busting temperatures in 2003 responsible for some 70,000 excess deaths across Europe may become closer to average summer peaks by as early as mid-century, the report suggests.

— The eastern and southern United States and the Caribbean will probably face hurricanes amplified by heavier rainfall and increased wind speeds.

Greater population density in exposed areas, rising property values and inadequate infrastructure will boost vulnerability, the draft warns. Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005, is seen by some scientists as an example of just such an confluence.

— For small island states, the top threat is incursion from rising seas, which not only erodes shorelines but poisons aquifers and destroys farmland as well.

Already measurable, these impacts are “very likely” — a 90-percent or greater probability — to become worse over time, even intolerable, the report concludes.

“In some cases, there may be a need to consider permanent evacuation,” it says.

— Climate models hold out the prospect of more droughts for West Africa, raising the spectre of famine in regions where daily life is already a hand-to-mouth experience for millions.

Factor in the biggest population boom of any continent over the next half-century and the danger of food “insecurity” in Africa becomes even greater, it cautions.

— In South Asia and Southeast Asia, computer models see a doubling in the frequency of devastating rainstorms. In East Asia, exceptional heatwaves will become hotter, and less exceptional.

By mid-century, temperature peaks in East Asia will be around 2.0 C (3.6 F) more than today, and by 2100 some 4.0 C (7.2 F), even under scenarios that see some efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The IPCC co-won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize after publishing a landmark “assessment report” that sparked worldwide awareness about climate change and its impacts. That document made only a brief reference to extreme weather events, leaving a gap that the panel hopes to fill with the new report.

The draft summary for policymakers will be reviewed, line-by-line, during a joint meeting of the IPCC’s Working Group I, which focuses on physical science, and Working Group II, which examines impacts. It is set to be released on Friday.

Article Source: AFP

Image Source: NASA

The current surge in United States military forces in Afghanistan part of a strategy designed to bring the war to an end from a position of strength. The great strains within the US military mean that the deployment of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan can be sustained only if forces can be withdrawn from Iraq at the scheduled rate: that is, all combat-forces out by August 2010 and the remaining (approximately 50,000) personnel by the end of 2011. The dynamics of violence in Iraq present a serious challenge to this strategy.

Washington is thus engaged in a delicate balancing-act: managing disengagement from Iraq while ensuring that the United States will retain a significant military presence in the country well beyond 2011 in order to exercise a maximum degree of influence. 

A new label

The US forces remaining in Iraq after the substantial withdrawal of August 2010 – which follows the evacuation of troops from Iraqi cities at the end of June 2009 – are intended to perform a variety of roles. Some may be engaged in training Iraqi forces; others in guarding the huge embassy-complex in Baghdad; and still more in what will be described as support-roles at Balad and other air-bases that have acquired a distinct air of permanency. In addition to these core military contingents, there will be many US security-contractors, themselves mostly ex-military. 

What will happen in the sixteen months between August 201o and December 2011 is pivotal. It is probable that at some point the remaining 50,000 American troops in Iraq will be designated “non-combat” – a wordplay that barely conceals the establishment by the US army of a new type of unit known as an “advise-and-assist” brigade (AAB). A new report explains their role:

“These brigades are to have traditional strike capabilities, as well as advisory roles, the ability to augment local forces with ‘combat enablers’ and command and control (C2) tools to support its own manoeuvre units and indigenous units” (see Daniel Wasserbly, “US forces analyse future role of advise-and-assist brigades in Iraq”, Jane’s International Defence Review, January 2010).

In effect, army units are both taking on new roles but retaining their existing and full combat-capabilities. It follows that their phased withdrawal will depend very much on the extent to which Iraq becomes a more peaceful state in which the interests of the United States and other western interests are secured.

An evolving strategy

The pattern of insurgent activity in Iraq suggests that this outcome is uncertain. In the course of 2009, the levels of violence across Iraq tended to stabilise after an initial decline. Around 5,000 Iraqi civilians were killed, and it was the first time since 2006 that there was no significant slump during the period (see “Civilian deaths from violence in 2009”, Iraq Body Count, 31 December 2009). 

There were, moreover, significant changes in the types of violence. The first few months of the year were dominated by major suicide-bombing attacks on mosques or crowded markets in Shi’a areas. The intention was most likely to provoke sectarian antagonism and then encourage fearful members of the Sunni minority to see the insurgents as their defenders, leading in turn to a violent destabilisation of the government in the run-up to the Iraqi elections on 7 March 2010.

In the second half of 2009, paramilitary groups began to target large government ministries in suicide-attacks. These naturally were located in high-security zones, but the assailants found ways of penetrating the cordons; in a series of attacks in August, October and December, five sets of government offices and ministries were hit and scores of civil servants killed (see “Iraq: the path of war”, 18 December 2009).

These attacks in particular caused deep unease among the American and allied agencies, not least because of the levels of security that had to be breached (see Roger Hardy, “Violence returns to Iraq”, BBC News, 8 December 2009). By the end of 2009, there were serious concerns as to whether the Iraqi security forces were capable even of protecting government buildings, and deep suspicions that the insurgents had access to inside information.

The operations extended beyond Baghdad, and they included frontal-assaults on Iraqi security forces. In Anbar’s provincial capital of Ramadi, for example, two suicide-bomb attacks in early January 2010 in a part of the city regarded as safe killed twenty-four people (mostly police-officers) and wounded around sixty, including the provincial governor Qassim Mohammed.

Even this surge left the overall degree of violence in Iraq much lower than it had been in 2007.  In this respect, a further shift in the focus of activity in the past ten days is notable: namely, towards hitting “symbolic” targets and a return to the mass killing of Shi’a civilians.

The biggest coordinated actions in several months were launched on 25 January 2010, when in the space of nine minutes coordinated blasts targeted three major hotels frequented by foreign visitors (and western journalists). Again despite high security, bombs were detonated close to the Ishtar Sheraton, the Babylon and the Hamra hotels, killing thirty-six people and wounding seventy-one (see Anthony Shadid & John Leland, “Baghdad Blasts Shatter Sense of Security in Capital”, New York Times, 26 January 2010). On the following day it was the turn of the Iraqi interior-ministry’s forensics offices, where at least seventeen people were killed and many more wounded.

The hotel incidents aroused most international comment, but the interior-ministry attack caused the greatest domestic worry, especially from civil servants (see Anthony Shadid, “Latest Bombings Add New Layer of Anxiety and Suspicion in Baghdad”, New York Times, 27 January 2010). Indeed, the fact that a great escalation of security since August 2009 has had little apparent effect is creating pervasive fear among government officials (see Khalid al-Ansary & Hadeel Kamil, “Civil Servants Fear More Attacks”, Institute for War and Peace Reporting – Iraq Crisis Report 320, 21 January 2010).

The spate of attacks on government targets has been accompanied by the targeting of Shi’a citizens – in this case, pilgrims taking part in the major religious festival centred on Karbala, 80 kilometres southwest of Baghdad. On 1 February, a female suicide-bomber killed more than forty people among a large crowd of pilgrims; and on 3 February there were three more attacks, including a huge car-bomb in Karbala itself which killed twenty-three people and injured scores more.

A stressed project

This combination of events and trends indicates that powerful paramilitary groups in Iraq (including al-Qaida) retain their ability to organise, plan and coordinate a deadly campaign. Their success in targeting some of the most heavily protected districts of Baghdad and other cities is a sign of a rooted influence among some sections of the Sunni population. Washington’s military and political analysts are deeply concerned that the campaign reflects a reorganisation of the insurgency that could further weaken official Iraqi security forces at the very time that US troops prepare to reduce their own role and depart the scene.

The worry from the Pentagon’s perspective is that the forthcoming “advise-and-assist” brigades may have to do much more than these bland terms suggest: namely, remain in Iraq in large numbers and even engage in direct combat-operations against insurgents. That, in turn, implies that further stresses will be felt throughout the US military just as the surge in Afghanistan reaches its peak later in 2010. 

Most Americans and citizens of other western countries may think that the Iraq war is more or less over, and that whatever remains of the conflict has nothing to do with Afghanistan. It seems probable that both beliefs are wrong. The implications for the United States, and other foreign powers waging the Afghanistan war, are serious.