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John Gale

If we didn’t know already, 2015 was the hottest year on record.

 The 2015 State of the Climate report has recently been published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. The report confirmed that 2015 surpassed 2014 as the warmest year since at least the mid-to-late 19th century. The record heat resulted from the combined influence of long-term global warming and one of the strongest El Niñ...
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Tim Dixon

Millionth tonne captured at Boundary Dam during IEAGHG International Summer School

Congratulations to SaskPower for capturing their millionth tonne of CO2 yesterday, during the IEAGHG International CCS Summer School visit. Fifty students from over 17 countries visited SaskPower's Boundary Dam project yesterday, coinciding with the capture of their millionth tonne. The students had been hearing from SaskPower about many aspects of...
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John Gale

A triumph for Science and Policy

Whilst we have been familiar with articles telling us that global surface temperatures are increasing month on month, water resources are increasingly stressed and that glaciers and ice sheets around the world are melting quickly at least there is some good news out there. A new study published in the Journal Science tells us that the Antarctic ozo...
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John Gale

That’s it then we are stuck with 400ppm

 According to a new study recently reported in the journal Nature, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 will stay permanently above 400 parts per million (ppm) this year due to El Nino. The follow on bad news is that the researchers do not expect that it will likely drop below 400ppm "within our lifetimes," Commenting on the research presented in...
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James Craig

Risk Management Network and Environment Research Network Combined Meeting Concludes

 The summary report of the Risk Management Network and Environmental Research Network Combined meeting held in September 2015 has now been published. This meeting was held at the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC), in Southampton and was attended by 62 delegates from 11 countries. The three day meeting included themes on risk assessment m...
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John Gale

Hitting new highs and lows and raised concerns

 The US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides up to date data on the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. The NOAA data set shows a steadily increasing concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. In June 2016 NOAA reported that in May 2016 they recorded the biggest year-over-year jump in atmospheric ...
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Tim Dixon

Public Sharing of Information on Progressing Development of the UK’s Strategic Carbon Dioxide Storage Resource

 There was an excellent webinar today hosted by the Global CCS Institute on work from the UK's Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) to develop UK storage resource. The report was produced by a consortium led by Aberdeen-based consultancy Pale Blue Dot Energy working with Axis Well Technology and Costain. It follows a 12 month project commission...
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Tim Dixon

Review of project permits under the London Protocol – An assessment of the proposed P18-4 CO2 storage site

 The London Convention and Protocol promotes the protection of the marine environment by prohibiting the dumping of wastes and other matter into the sea. Under the Protocol all dumping is prohibited, with the exception of a limited number of selected substances. In 2007, an amendment entered into force which permitted CO2 streams for geologica...
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James Craig

Operational flexibility of CO2 transport and storage

 One of the advantages of CCS as a means of CO2 abatement is that several industrial processes, as well as fossil fuel power generation, can be captured and connected to a pipeline network. Multiple sources of CO2 can then be transported to suitable geological reservoirs and injected to ensure secure storage. Many industrial operations, and po...
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Tim Dixon

New report - Review of GHG Accounting Rules for CCS

IEAGHG has jsut published a new techncial review - 2016-TR3, Review of GHG Accounting Rules for CCS. The review was completed by Carbon Counts. A range of greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring and accounting protocols and guidelines currently exist for carbon capture and storage (CCS) activities, and various activities continue in this area. This report ...
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John Gale

Aerosols who needs them and back to square 1 for the climate modellers?

 I have read a fascinating article in Nature about the ability of trees to seed clouds. All the research I have seen to date suggests that if we act to reduce air pollution by scrubbing sulphur dioxide from power plants then we reduce the albedo effect of clouds and the earth heats up. This has in part been blamed for increasing temperatures i...
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Jasmin Kemper

Can CO2 capture and storage unlock ‘unburnable carbon’?

 'Unburnable carbon' refers to fossil fuel reserves that cannot be used and the resulting greenhouse gases emitted if the world has a limited 'carbon budget'. This situation leads to the question: what role does technology have in addressing these concepts and concerns related to them? The International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Intergovernm...
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John Gale

A New Plastics Economy?

As we all know plastics are a man-made creation which like steel and cement are the building blocks of our current society. However plastics particularly packing is used only once then discarded causing significant environmental problems. The adverse impacts of discarded plastic in the oceans is well documented. Plastic manufacture uses 6% of globa...
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John Gale

You Just Can’t win.

 It seems to be well documented scientific fact that the Artic is warming much more rapidly than the global average. See: http://www.carbonbrief.org/cuts-in-europes-air-pollution-have-boosted-arctic-warming.This is a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification. The main cause of the warming is considered to be the loss of sea ice in the region. A...
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John Gale

Artic Ice cover at all-time low.

Coming on the back of NOAA news recently of 2015 being the hottest year on record and January and February 2016 being consecutively the hottest months on record so far it is not surprising to see that scientists from the International Arctic Research Centre have reported sea ice levels are at an all-time low. Apparently sea ice cover on 24 March 20...
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John Gale

Are we already locked into warming if 1.50C?

 The World Bank recently published its latest report in the series; Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal which makes for grim reading.  This latest report focuses on the risks of climate change to development in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, and parts of Europe and Central Asia. It lo...
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John Gale

When hot just started getting hotter

 The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NASA have shown us that the Earth's 2015 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880. Not only that, but the record-breaking year continues a long-term warming trend, 15 of the 16 warmest years on record have now occurred since 2001. This visual...
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John Gale

The bumpy road from Paris

The ink has now dried on the Paris Accord and plans embodied in the INDC's need to begin to be implemented. However, the road ahead for implementation may not be that straight forward, as recent developments with three of the largest global emitters suggest. In the USA one of the key components of their plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in t...
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Tim Dixon

UTCCS3 – CCUS Research in Texas

 I was invited to participate at the University of Texas's UTCCS3 event last week as I am working with them on the offshore storage workshop. UTCCS is a biannual conference where three research programmes on CCS come together to hold their programme reviews with their sponsors, presenting the current research work and results. The programmes a...
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John Gale

Industrial CCS the key in Norway

Norway is focusing on CCS applications in industry, with three pre-feasibility studies underway on CCS projects at a fertiliser plant, a waste to energy plant and at an ammonia fertiliser plant. Whilst it may be that Norway only chooses one project to proceed to demonstration, all three represent unique opportunities that will add to the portfolio ...
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