Human influence on climate system is clear, says IPCC summary

Major update: On 30 September 2013 the IPCC released the Final Draft Report of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Climate Change 2013. This is commonly called ‘The Physical Science Basis’. It consists of the full scientific and technical assessment undertaken by Working Group I.

The Final Draft consists of 19 documents – 14 chapters, three annexes, a technical summary and a changes summary. These you will find via this list:

01 Technical Summary (6.05 MB)
02 Ch01 Introduction (2.66 MB)
03 Ch02 Observations: Atmosphere and Surface (10.40 MB)
04 Ch03 Observations: Ocean (18.10 MB)
05 Ch04 Observations: Cryosphere (5.18 MB)
06 Ch05 Information from Paleoclimate Archives (4.78 MB)
07 Ch06 Carbon and Other Biogeochemical Cycles (8.90 MB)
08 Ch07 Clouds and Aerosols (3.48 MB)
09 Ch08 Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing (2.83 MB)
10 Ch09 Evaluation of Climate Models (6.81 MB)
11 Ch10 Detection and Attribution of Climate Change: from Global to Regional (4.39 MB)
12 Ch11 Near-term Climate Change: Projections and Predictability (5.45 MB)
13 Ch12 Long-term Climate Change: Projections, Commitments and Irreversibility (25.50 MB)
14 Ch13 Sea Level Change (6.17 MB)
15 Ch14 Climate Phenomena and their Relevance for Future Regional Climate Change (7.74 MB)
16 Annex I: Atlas of Global and Regional Climate Projections (36.50 MB)
17 Annex II: Glossary (0.80 MB)
18 Annex III: Acronyms and Regional Abbreviations (0.50 MB)
19 Changes to the Underlying Scientific/Technical Assessment (0.20 MB)

Map of the observed surface temperature change from 1901 to 2012 derived from temperature trends. The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend, show a warming of 0.85 [0.65 to 1.06] °C, over the period 1880–2012. For the longest period when calculation of regional trends is sufficiently complete (1901–2012), almost the entire globe has experienced surface warming. Source: IPCC

Early statements and releases from the Twelfth Session of Working Group I which was held from 2013 September 23-26 in Stockholm, Sweden. The press release about the human influence on the climate system is here, which has said “this is evident in most regions of the globe”.

The IPCC has also provided headline statements from the Summary for Policymakers of the Working Group contribution to AR5. At the Session, the Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the Working Group I contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (WGI AR5) was approved and the underlying scientific and technical assessment accepted. (See the earlier post on the AR5 process.)

For the Fifth Assessment Report, the scientific community has defined a set of four new scenarios. These are called Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). These four RCPs include one ‘mitigation scenario’ leading to a very low radiative forcing level (RCP2.6). (Radiative forcing is the change in net irradiance; it is used to assess and compare the anthropogenic and natural drivers of climate change). There are two ‘stabilisation scenarios’ (RCP4.5 and RCP6), and one scenario with very high greenhouse gas emissions (RCP8.5). The RCPs can thus represent a range of 21st century climate policies.

The fifth tolling of the IPCC bell

The first release of the IPCC’s AR5.

The Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will begin to be released this week. Between 2013 September and 2014 November, what is now widely referred to as the ‘AR5’ (the fifth assessment report) will be released in stages as the three working groups present their completed work and finally when the overall synthesis report is delivered. AR5 will be the most comprehensive assessment of scientific knowledge on climate change since 2007 when Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) was released.

From around early August, the popular media has begun – in a typically lethargic and lazy manner, choosing to look for controversy rather than the very clear IPCC warnings – to report on the series of releases that will be AR5. But despite the strenuous efforts of the oil and gas industry PR firms, of the automobile industry lobbyists, of the carpetbaggers for the financiers and the banks that have propped up for decades the whole damned mess, even so, the messages have come out and together they are stark and strong.

Extreme weather events, including heatwaves and storms, have increased in many regions while ice sheets are dwindling at an alarming rate. In addition, sea levels are rising while the oceans are being acidified. From climate change experts to spokespersons of small island states, governments have been told bluntly to end their dithering about fossil fuels and start working to create a global low-carbon economy to curtail global warming.

What it all coalesces into we will begin to see this week. Consult the handy factsheet for WG I that explains how much drafting and reviewing the first release has emerged from. And here is the time-table for the AR5:

The contents of the Working Group I report in 14 packed chapters.

Working Group I assesses the physical science basis of the climate system and natural and anthropogenic climate change (release 2013 September 23-27 in Stockholm, Sweden). [You will find all material for this release at the website devoted to this group’s work.]
Working Group II assesses the vulnerability of socio-economic and natural systems to climate change, negative and positive impacts of climate change, and options for adapting to it (release 2014 March 25-31 in Yokohama, Japan).
Working Group III assesses options for mitigating climate change through limiting or preventing greenhouse gas emissions and enhancing activities that remove them from the atmosphere (release 2014 April 07-12 in Berlin, Germany).
The Synthesis Report will integrate material contained within IPCC Assessment Reports and Special Reports, based exclusively on material contained in the three Working Group Reports and Special Reports produced during the 5th or previous Assessment Cycles, and will be written in a non-technical style suitable for policymakers and address a broad range of question relevant to policy (release 2014 October 27-31 in Copenhagen, Denmark).

[You’ll find more on the websites of the IPCC’s three working groups – Working Group I: The Science of Climate Change; Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability; Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change – and the Task Force on Greenhouse Gas Inventories. See the chapter contents of the World Group I report here.]

These details have been missed by the press, some of whom are still spreading the canard that climate change science is beset by uncertainty (it is not, dear biased editor of the Los Angeles Times), or that the IPCC will try “to explain a hiatus in the pace of global warming this century” (look at the charts and read the graphs, Reuters), or that a “global warming pause is central to IPCC climate report” (tell me, BBC, where is the real centre of 14 dense chapters?), or that “the findings muddy the picture about how much carbon dioxide output is affecting the climate” (why, Bloomberg Businessweek, is the truth of climate data so difficult to digest for a news group used to copious amounts of finance data?).

Beyond and above the efforts of the mainstream press and media to play down the stark and clear warning that demands immediate action, the AR5 will place greater emphasis on assessing the socio-economic aspects of climate change and its implications for sustainable development. New features to look for in the AR5 will include: a new set of scenarios for analysis across Working Group contributions; dedicated chapters on sea level change, carbon cycle and climate phenomena such as monsoon and El Niño; much greater regional detail on climate change impacts, adaptation and mitigation interactions; inter- and intra-regional impacts; and a multi-sector synthesis.

India’s onion panic

The monthly swings, spikes and tears of the Maratha onion. The red line is the price per quintal, which is on the scale to the right. The quantities are in tons, on the scale to the left. Both price and quantity are for onions in Maharashtra, for the period 2006 to 2013 June. The data is from the National Horticulture Mission.

We onion eaters shudder when we remember the annus horribilis of 2010, when onion prices rose to a monthly average of about Rs 2,400 a quintal (that’s 100 kilograms).

Now, our familiar red allium cepa is lightening our slim purses by 70 rupees for a kilo. Will the rest of 2013 turn out to be another onion-scarce quarter? I should hope not. The chart tells us that the price peak of 2010 accompanied a dreadful shortfall in the supply of the pungent stuff, but surely, the low supply levels of mid-2008 and late 2007 were even more severe, as my chart tells us.

More worrying is the upward flight of that red line in this last month, which is now at or around a level second only to the peak of 2010.

The popular press hasn’t noticed the curious trend (perhaps editors and reporters nowadays must consume far too much pizza, pasta, cola, burgers and so on, untutored in the ways of the jowari roti, the one-half of a juicy red onion, and a handful of ‘lasanyache chutney’, as one says in Marathi, which is the unforgettable district staple of chutney made from ground garlic, red chillies and coconut; more the losers they then.)

Business Today has reported that “industry experts are perplexed by the trend” of the rise in onion prices (what’s their expertise worth I wonder), the Business Line warned that “after racing ahead of the rupee, onion could turn costlier than petrol”, the New Indian Express found Food Minister K V Thomas doing his bit to calm the nation by saying that “there’s no cause for panic”, and the Business Standard’s reporter in Lasalgaon, in the district of Nashik in Maharashtra, which is reckoned to be Asia’s largest onion market, nearly fainted away when the price shot up to Rs 5,300 a quintal.

Sons of the Indian soil, 1941

The Gavara ryot of Madras (left) and the Kunbi cultivator of Gujarat (right)

To present the cultivator as a person and not as an economic unit. This was the object of a delightful and, in its own way, philosophical volume on the Indian cultivator, published more than threescore and ten years ago in 1941.

‘Sons Of The Soil, Studies Of The Indian Cultivator’ was edited by W J Burns, at the time an Agricultural Commissioner with the Government of India, and the book was printed at the Government Of India Press (at 8 Hastings Street, Calcutta).

The Gavara ryot of Madras, by B Ramaiah Garu – Age-long experience has taught him to adjust the details of his operations in such a way that he and the other members of his family are kept engaged throughout the year and employ as little outside labour as possible. He looks after his cattle well and often makes money by purchasing young calves or buffaloes, rearing them and selling them after working them in his own fields for a season or two.
The Kunbi cultivator of Gujarat, By B S Patel – He is fairly hardy and is inured to the toil and hardship associated with farming. He is sober, quiet, industrious, enterprising and frugal, except on special occasions such as marriage and death ceremonies, when he spends rather beyond his means, vying with his richer brethren. He is very  hospitable, frank by nature, simple in his habits and is a good husband and father. His dress consists of a piece of white cloth wrapped round his head by way of turban, a bandi (a coat up to the waist) and a dhoti covering his legs.

I have here very cursorily extracted the text from six of the 25 captivating sketches of these sons of the soil (the regions included four that were in British India but are not in the Republic of India). These sketches, the treatment by their authors of the cultivator as a many-sided personality, shaped by his region and culture, are of a quality that has scarcely in my view been matched in recent years.

The Lingayat ryot of the Karnatak (left) and the Bengal cultivator (right).

The Lingayat ryot of the Karnatak, by Rao Bahadur S S Salimath – His diet is very simple. It consists mainly of jowar bread, nucchu (broken and boiled jowar grain), boiled pulses, & small quantity of any vegetable that may be available and some rice if he can afford it. His holiday dish is either Imggi (whole wheat grain boiled with some gur) or malidi (boiled wheat dried, pounded and mixed with some gur). The latter is preferred for journeys and in camps.
The Bengal cultivator, By K McLean – The cultivator has a long day. Dawn finds the cultivator up and about on the way to the field. His breakfast, consisting of reheated boiled rice, is brought to him in the field and he carries on till midday when he returns to the homestead for the big meal of the day. This consists of rice and curry which may be made of vegetables only or include fish according to the season.

The many volumes of the last score of years that describe the growing of food and the lives of the growers of food usually fall into two categories – the first of the political economy and agrarian relations kind, which are loaded with sociological cant and dense with agro-economic punditry, or they are the ‘market’ kind and erase to a featureless nothingness the cultivating household in favour of advocating various solutions to the problems of yield, or credit, of cooperation or of finding ways to get produce to market.

Both approaches have for the most part lost sight of the cultivator, his habits, his dislikes, his preferred repasts, his entertainment and his eccentricities.

The Kurmi cultivator (left) and the Bihar cultivator (right).

Hence the clear foreword of ‘Sons Of The Soil’ (for clarity was easier then, when needs were fewer and the distance between town and village shorter, both on the road and in the mind), which said of the cultivator: “He is India outside of the towns. He is mentioned in speeches, leaders, lectures and poems usually more as a type than a person. The object of the following sketches is to give some clear outlines in place of this vagueness, and especially to show the variety of individuals and classes who cultivate the soil of this great country.”

The Kurmi cultivator, By M Mohiuddin Ahmad – It is rather creditable to the Kurmi cultivator that, working against heavy odds, he manages to produce excellent crops on his fields and very successfully competes with more advantageously placed cultivators. Every Kurmi cultivator commits to memory a large number of sayings on different agricultural subjects, such as preparation of seed-bed, time of sowing, manuring, weather forecasts, livestock, and so on.
The Bihar cultivator, By D R Sethi – Simple in habits, thrifty to a degree and a master in the art of market-gardening, the Koer is amongst the best of the tillers of the soil to be found anywhere in India. He rarely hires labour but makes all members of his family, including his womenfolk, work in the fields. The Koer does not indulge in expensive social ceremonies and spends less on marriages than other cultivating classes. He is religious and as a rule avoids intoxicants.

“There is,” Burns had written all those years ago, “a family resemblance between these cultivator types, a resemblance that grows as one reads the life-story and daily routine of one son of the soil after another. There is the same plainness of life, the same wrestling with uncertainties of climate (except in favoured areas), the same love of simple games, sport and songs, the same religious background, the same neighbourly helpfulness, and the same financial indebtedness.”

When India’s food growers cannot afford fuel, light and food

This group of ten charts describes the trends over more than seven years of the food, and the fuel and light components of the consumer price index numbers for agricultural labourers. The data has been taken from reports issued by the Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India.

This group of charts describes the trends of two indexes – food, and fuel and light – for agricultural labourers in ten states. The consumer price index (CPI) that is usually invoked by the government, by industry, by the corporate associations (such as chambers of commerce), and by economists and banks is a number for that month considered to be ‘national’.

This has no meaning, for what you and I buy is not at a ‘national’ market but at a local one – we may even buy from a roving street vendor, provided our municipal corporation or council has the sense not to outlaw these vendors (which sadly is discrimination common in metropolitan cities).

A consumer price index, in order to be of any use, must be local, and must relate to those who can set some store by it. That is why it is most useful to look carefully at what CPI includes, and it does include much detail, which this small group of charts helps reveal.

The consumer price index numbers for agricultural and rural labourers (with a base of 100 fixed to the year 1986-87) is calculated by the Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India. Who are agricultural labourers? The Bureau’s definition is: “Agricultural labour households – the rural labour households, who derive 50 per cent or more of their total income from wage paid manual labour in agricultural activities, are treated as agricultural labour households.”

According to the Bureau, a person is considered an agricultural labourer, if she or he “follows one or more of the following agricultural occupations in the capacity of a labourer on hire, whether paid in cash or kind or partly in cash and partly in kind” and the occupations are: farming including cultivation, growing and harvesting of any agricultural commodity; production, cultivation, growing and harvesting of any horticultural commodity; dairy farming; raising of livestock, bee-keeping or poultry farming; any practice performed on a farm “incidental to or in conjunction with the farm operations” (this includes forestry, market-related activities such as delivery and storage, and the actual movement of produce to markets).

The collection of rural retail prices every month from shops and markets is done by the Field Operations Division of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). In 20 states it collects data from 600 representative sample villages every month, with one-fourth of the sample being covered every week. Prices are collected either on a market day (which is most commonly a set day of the week) for those villages that do not have daily markets, or on any day for those that do.

And here we have – for Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Gujarat, West Bengal and Bihar, ten of India’s most populous states – the proof of how much India’s growers of food are burdened by the rising price of fuel and light (that means of electricity and power, diesel, kerosene and coal) and of food (cultivators and food growers also buy what they do not grow or husband).

Monsoon mysteries, mundane mathematics

Rainfall averages for the months of January to August 2013, nicely arranged in one handy panel.

June, July and August 2013 are behind us and India’s understanding of the south-west monsoon – and also of climate change during monsoon and outside the monsoon months – has scarcely improved.

Other than the announcements from the Indian Meteorological Department, which are unintelligible to anyone with even the smallest interest in monsoon and climate, there is little in India’s media or from official sources that helps turn an embarrassing scarcity of understanding into knowledge.

The IMD, I was told about two years ago by a senior crop scientist, is queried every day by officious underlings from New Delhi wanting to know weather conditions for wherever their bosses are to visit, and this means the ministers of the cabinet, sundry senior and junior ministers, all variety of politicians and all their scheming cronies and hangers-on. That is why the IMD has so many special forecasts for New Delhi on its website. For the Indian Meteorological Department, India outside Delhi seems to be an annoyance.

There are science institutes, such as the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, which is, as far as I can make out, the seat of the scientific inquiry into monsoon and climate. The communication about its work however is either dismal or absurdly comic. Scientists long ago realised that to be of use to society, they had to make their questions and answers understood by those whom they wish to serve.

In such a spirit, India’s monsoon and climate scientists and researchers ought to have begun their careers with a session before their grandmothers – could they explain their work to their grandmothers? If not, they ought not to have been accepted in their present jobs (and their grandmothers should be inducted instead, for the wealth of their traditional knowledge).

And this is why we have gobbledygook such as this – from the IMD, about the 2013 September forecast:

“The 5-parameter PCR model was also used to prepare probability forecasts for the pre-defined 3 (tercile) categories of rainfall during the second half of the monsoon season. These are below normal (<90% of LPA), near normal (90-110% of LPA), above normal (>110% of LPA). The tercile categories have equal climatological probabilities (33.33%  each).  The  forecasted  probabilities  for  the  September  2013  rainfall  over  the country as a whole in percentage for the above tercile categories are  31%,  53%, and 16% respectively.”

Can the Director General of Meteorology – who is the head of the IMD – explain this to his washerman, his gardener and the chap who sells him vegetables? If not, he ought to make way for someone who can, because India understands the DG of M not at all, and we’re not paying his salary and departmental budget from our taxes to be misspoken to about the rain.

Just so that you know, this verbally challenged gentleman is assisted in his duties by five Additional Directors General and by 20 Deputy Directors General. And when I examined where this chatty group is deployed, the Delhi obsession (or fear thereof) became immediately clear, for of the five Additionals, four are in Delhi (the fifth is in Pune), and of the 20 Deputies, ten are in Delhi (the others are over the capital’s horizon, toiling somewhere in the torpor of the sub-continent.

The IMD runs six regional meteorological centres – each ruled by a humourless Deputy Director General, all morbid conversationalists – and these are to be found at Mumbai, Chennai, New Delhi, Kolkata, Nagpur and Guwahati. Then the IMD has what it importantly calls ‘operational units’: meteorological centres at state capitals, forecasting offices, agro-meteorological advisory service centres, flood meteorological offices, area cyclone warning centres and cyclone warning centres. All important centres, all equally incoherent about their work, all equally clueless about how to speak simply with those who need the forecasts the most.

But the disease of obscurantist climatic communication is to be found also in the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, to wit: “However, the extended range predictability arises from Monsoon Intraseasonal Oscillations (MISOs) which are the quasi-periodic northward propagating large-scale convective cloud bands that manifest as the active/break spells, as described earlier.”

What will it take to get these scientists and researchers to understand that monsoon, rain, weather and climate are of great interest to most adults amongst the country’s 1.25 billion-strong population, and that by mumbling only to each other in equations and formulae they continue to do us a mis-service, and in fact shirk their main duty?

The data vault of the 2011 Indian Census

20140304 – Major update – Extensive new data tables have been made available for public use by the Census of India. These include: (1) Primary Census Abstract tables to the village and ward level, (2) consolidated top level datasheets for Population Enumeration Data, population living in villages, age data, and data on disability.

Here they are:

[Set 1] Primary Census Abstract Data (Final Population); Primary Census Abstract Data for Houseless (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Primary Census Abstract Data for Scheduled Castes (SC) (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Primary Census Abstract Data for Scheduled Tribes (ST) (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Primary Census Abstract Data for Slum (India & States/UTs – Town Level) ; Primary Census Abstract Data Highlights – 2011 (India & States/UTs) ; Primary Census Abstract Data Tables (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Primary Census Abstract Data Tables (India & States/UTs – Town/Village/Ward Level).

[Set 2] Villages By Population ; Village population Tables ; Percentage of population living in villages of various population size with reference to the total rural population: 2011 ; Percentage of villages and population by class of villages in 2001 and 2011 ; Statement showing the number of Villages of population 10,000 and above with their population: 2001-2011 ; Distribution of 10,000 villages of each class in All India and 10,000 population in each class of villages All India among the States and Union Territories.

[Set 3] Single Year Age Data – (India/States/UTs) ; Single Year Age Data for Scheduled Castes (SC) ; Single Year Age Data for Scheduled Tribes (ST) ; Five Year Age Group Data ; Five Year Age Data for Scheduled Castes (SC) ; Five Year Age Data for Scheduled Castes (ST).

[Set 4] Disabled Population by type of Disability, Age and Sex (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Disabled Population by type of Disability, Age and Sex For Scheduled Castes (India & States/UTs – District Level) ; Disabled Population by type of Disability, Age and Sex For Scheduled Tribes (India & States/UTs – District Level).

20130903 – The Census 2011 as a data source is now two years old for the first indicators and preliminary estimates were released in 2011 June and July. Since then we have had regular releases from the world’s most detailed very large-scale enumeration of people.

The ‘primary census abstract’ is the most important record for a settlement, whether a rural hamlet or an urban town ward. This contains the population, gender ratio, literacy rate, proportion of children, the numbers of scheduled tribe and caste members, and also contains the four-fold break-up of the working population.

The Census of India has released the primary census abstract (PCA) to the district level for all states and union territories. On the website, you can get the tables for individual districts through a series of menus. Here, I have posted the xls data sheets for every state and union territory, and each sheet contains the PCA for all that state’s districts.

In alphabetical order (and with the state census code) they are: Andaman and Nicobar Islands (35), Andhra Pradesh (28), Arunachal Pradesh (12), Assam (18), Bihar (10), Chandigarh (04), Chhattisgarh (22), Dadra and Nagar Haveli (26), Daman and Diu (25), Delhi (07), Goa (30), Gujarat (24), Haryana (06), Himachal Pradesh (02), Jammu and Kashmir (01), Jharkhand (20), Karnataka (29), Kerala (32), Lakshadweep (31), Madhya Pradesh (23), Maharashtra (27), Manipur (14), Meghalaya (17), Mizoram (15), Nagaland (13), Odisha (21), Puducherry (34), Punjab (03), Rajasthan (08), Sikkim (11), Tamil Nadu (33), Tripura (16), Uttar Pradesh (09), Uttarakhand (05), West Bengal (19).