MONTHLY NEWSLETTER SEPTEMBER 2018
Woods Hole Research Center A new frontier: climate science and the financial sector Dr. Philip B. Duffy President & Executive Director Recently, WHRC announced a new initiative with Wellington Management to integrate climate science and asset management.
Meeting the challenge of climate change will require a broad societal effort, which is why WHRC is dedicated to with working with actors who have diverse perspectives, interests, and expertise.
The manifestations of climate change have never been more obvious to the scientific community. To cite just a few examples, this summer saw extreme heat in northern Europe, Siberia, Japan, and elsewhere, and record-breaking wildfires in California. Super typhoon Mangkhut was the most intense storm anywhere so far this year and the most intense ever recorded in Hong Kong. Most recently, Hurricane Florence exhibited nearly all of the characteristics that we expect to be enhanced by greenhouse warming. Events like these have enormous implications for financial markets. Scientists have clearly associated these weather events with climate change. Scientific “event attribution” studies rigorously estimate how much more likely a specific event is now than without climate change.
Extreme weather is costly and disruptive in the short term, and in the longer term can affect asset values as well as the cost and availability of property insurance. Several recent studies have shown that the threat of sea level rise is starting to affect the value of properties near the coast. Less dramatic aspects of climate change also have important financial ramifications.
For example, climate change affects crop yields, the nutritional content of food, and the risk from pest infestations. It also means longer growing seasons and changes in where crops will be grown. All of this has consequences for food prices and scarcity.
Illuminating the financial consequences of coming changes in climate is an enormous challenge; it involves understanding how climate change will effect human systems like agriculture, infrastructure, health care delivery, and so on. The good news is that we have tools—climate models—with a proven track record of making successful predictions, and that these tools and others have been used to create a broad and increasingly deep understanding of the likely societal impacts of climate change. Given this, it is perhaps remarkable that the financial implications of these impacts are relatively unexplored. At WHRC we believe that shedding light on these risks (and opportunities) is a chance to affect the thinking and actions of an industry that wields enormous influence. We are excited to have this opportunity and particularly excited to work with a recognized industry leader like Wellington. WHRC’s mission has always been to use science to inform how people think and act with respect to climate change, and this new initiative is no different. Thanks as always for your interest and support.
WHRC is an independent research institute where scientists investigate the causes and effects of climate change to identify and implement opportunities for conservation, restoration and economic development around the world. WHRC has been ranked as the top independent climate change think tank in the world for four years in a row. Learn more at www.whrc.org.
Woods Hole Research Center and Wellington Management announce historic initiative to measure climate change risk to investments by Dave McGlinchey WHRC has announced a groundbreaking initiative with Wellington Management, one of the world’s largest independent investment management firms, to integrate climate science and asset management.
Boston-based Wellington Management is one of the world’s largest independent investment management firms, with more than 2,200 institutional clients and mutual fund sponsors in 60 countries. Wellington had over US$1 trillion of client assets under management as of June 30, 2018. “Climate change is the defining challenge of our time. It will impact all areas of society, including financial markets,” said WHRC President Philip Duffy. “Collaboration is an important way for us to amplify our impact and we are excited about the opportunity to work with Wellington to influence how an important industry thinks about climate change.” This new alliance will focus on creating quantitative models to help analyze and
better understand how and where climate change may impact global capital markets. Wellington and WHRC will collaborate on a broad range of projects, including developing investor tools and innovative analytical methods seeking to improve climate risk assessment and investment outcomes. Wellington will use modeling on climate change impacts—such as sea level rise, drought, heat, and precipitation—to directly inform investment decisions. “We look forward to working with WHRC to thoroughly understand and accurately interpret the latest climate science research and the potential implications of climate change for capital markets,” said Wendy Cromwell, Wellington’s director of sustainable investment. “We believe an in-depth appreciation of the risks and opportunities presented by climate change will enhance our ability to help our clients achieve their investment objectives.” California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest public pension
fund, in the United States, will work with Wellington and WHRC to apply these investment insights.
“As a long-term investor, we’re continually looking to sharpen our ability to analyze climate risk in our investment portfolio and in underwriting prospective investments,” said Beth Richtman, CalPERS managing investment director for sustainable investments.
The work is already underway, and WHRC will use the research that comes out of the project to publish academic papers.
New study says Amazon fertilizer use is less harmful than expected by Connor Murphy Nitrogen fertilizers on Amazon farmland emit less greenhouse gases and release less nitrogen into local water than expected, according to a new paper recently released in the Nature publication Scientific Reports. (go.nature.com/2NA0hLV)
Dr. Christopher Neill of the Woods Hole Research Center, a co-author on the paper, said that growing more than one crop per year and applying more fertilizer to achieve higher crop yields on already-cleared land could help slow and eventually stop Amazon deforestation - if intensification is combined with enforcement of laws that protect existing forest.
“These results are important because they suggest that some additional fertilizer could be used on Amazon crops without triggering many of the environmental downsides that are common con-sequences of intensive cropping in the U.S and Europe,” Neill said. The study, led by Dr. KathiJo Jankowski of the United States Geological Survey Environmental Sciences Center, applied different amounts of nitrogen fertilizer to corn and soybeans planted at the Tanguro Ranch research station in Brazil.
The team found that the recommended fertilizer dose of 80 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare now used at Tanguro was almost all taken up by the corn crop. “Farmers have a pretty good system worked out for judging the amount of nitrogen that’s needed,” Neill said. “It’s just enough to get a boost in yield, but not so much to cause nitrogen to be left over.”
With the high cost of fertilizers, Neill said that following those recommendations is a costeffective practice for farmers. Researchers also found that at the higher doses of 120, 160, or even 200 kilograms of nitrogen per hectare, virtually all the excess nitrogen was trapped in soils at depths of about two to six meters instead of leaching into the groundwater. “This finding has major implications,” Neill said. “Most Amazon cropland is expanding onto soils that are deep, weathered Oxisols like those at Tanguro Ranch. These soils appear to act like sponges that absorb excess nitrogen and keep it from moving into streams and rivers.”
Neill added that it remains to be seen if the minimal effect of fertilizer use on nitrogen leaching from soils could increase over time. “This cropping system has been in place for less than 20 years,” Neill said. “We don’t yet know the capacity of this soil buffering, how long it will last, or what will happen if nitrogen accumulates beyond some threshold. That’s going to be one of the critical questions that will determine the environmental sustainability of more intensive Amazon cropping.”
Scientists develop measurement for potential natural vegetation by Connor Murphy As the world’s forests continue to suffer from degradation and deforestation, scientists have developed a useful tool for building them back.
“Potential natural vegetation” is a measurement of how densely a plot of land can be reforested. As the focus of a new study in PeerJ’s Journal of Life and Environmental Sciences, this unique tool was created to be part of a larger project on worldwide carbon. (bit.ly/2IbAxzv)
By analyzing records of ancient pollen, a research team that included WHRC’s Dr. John Sanderman measured how much plant life could exist in a world without humans. Next, they combined those records with global sunlight data, to create a map of an overgrown Earth. While the idea of a maximum cap for plant life is hypothetical, it can still be helpful to ecologists and climate scientists.
“Knowing the potential natural vegetation is useful for any modeling studies that involve forestry,” Sanderman said. “In a lot of studies, we normally just assume some natural vegetative state, but with this, we can eliminate some of the uncertainties.”
Potential natural vegetation, sometimes called “PNV,” can also serve as a benchmark for forest restorations, can help estimate
potential soil carbon, and eventually could serve as a resource for individual landowners.
“If you can map the potential vegetation of the world, you can estimate the soil carbon from the potential vegetation,” said Tomislav Hengl, a geospatial analyst for the Netherlands-based environmental consulting firm Envirometrix, and lead author on the study. “With a higher resolution, you can get closer to what we call a farm scale. Let’s say someone takes the data, which is open source, and puts it in a mobile phone. That would give people a very good estimate for the potential of their land.”
Example of predicted PNV distributions for European forest tree species Quercus robur/petraea (pedunculate/sessile oak)
News briefs Woods Hole Research Center scientists and staff attended the Global Climate Action Summit, held in San Francisco, California from September 11-14. WHRC took part in several events with partners, including one hosted by the Nature4Climate coalition.
Dr. Alessandro Baccini presented at a World Economic Forum event held in San Francisco the same week. Baccini spoke about efforts to measure deforestation, forest degradation, and reforestation at the “Fourth Industrial Revolution for the Earth: Sprint to 2020” conference.
The application period is open for the 2019 Polaris Project, an expedition of WHRC scientists and undergraduate college students who study thawing permafrost and related climate change impacts in Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Students can learn more and apply here: www.thepolarisproject.org
WHRC scientist receives award for research on landscape ecology by Connor Murphy WHRC scientist Dr. Ludmila Rattis won the Márcio Ayres Award on August 22 for the best paper published by a young scientist from 2016-2018 in Perspectives in Ecology and Conservation.
The award recognized her study, “Geographic range-scale assessment of species
conservation status,” at the conference for the Brazilian Association of Ecology and Conservation Science in Campinas, Brazil. Rattis is an international postdoctoral fellow working with a scholarship from the Brazilian Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento para o Ensino Superior. (bit.ly/2xySK62) Rattis said she felt “joy, gratitude, and energy,” to celebrate the occasion with her colleagues.
“Ludmila is a great ecologist who is really good at connecting her science with its application,” said WHRC Research Assistant Nolan Kitts, who recently worked with Rattis in Brazil. “You can tell she cares about the people and ecosystems that will be affected by climate change.”
Her paper, published earlier this year, examined how the spatial scale of ecological models affects our understanding of species conservation. To do this research, Rattis developed a framework to inspect habitatrelated data for a wide variety of species on different spatial scales.
The study found that local and smaller scales that do not include species’ needs to move and reproduce do not capture habitat patterns necessary to fully investigate species conservation. On larger scales, species conservation studies find lower species carrying capacities than on studies of the smaller, more targeted areas. With the findings of this paper, Rattis intends to aid future research by isolating ranges at which different factors of landscape ecology are best examined.
“This is also a great incentive for me and my fellow co-authors to continue in the scientific career, despite the recent cuts in science and research investments (in Brazil),” Rattis said. At Woods Hole Research Center, her research is primarily focused on understanding how continued deforestation and increasing greenhouse gases will affect the climate of the Amazon and Brazilian agricultural food production.
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WHRC in the news Major investment firm wants to rely on climate data. A Climatewire article about WHRC’s initiative with Wellington Management quoted WHRC President Philip Duffy. September 25. bit.ly/2Dw3gAp Wellington Management, Woods Hole team up to study climate change. The Boston Business Journal article also covered WHRC’s initiative with Wellington Management. September 25. bit.ly/2ztVAKP
NASA Discovers Arctic Lakes Bubbling With Methane. A Newsweek article on new research about emissions from Arctic lakes quotes Dr. Sue Natali. September 13. bit.ly/2xkYUGP
Hurricane Florence’s Unusual Extremes. WHRC President Phil Duffy was quoted in a story by InsideClimate News on the intensity of Hurricane Florence and how it is related to climate change. September 13. bit.ly/2p70rvy Climate mitigation has an ally in need of recognition and land rights: indigenous peoples in tropical countries. A Mongabay article on the importance of indigenous peoples and their land to climate mitigation and forest conservation featured Dr. Wayne Walker. September 10. bit.ly/2oYw3Ds Tropical Forests Are Flipping From Storing Carbon To Releasing It. An article in The Nation called WHRC research on forest monitoring “one of the most important … climate studies in years.” August 30. bit.ly/2Mx4HgS Scientists Find Some Arctic Soil May Not Freeze At All in Winter. In a CNBC story about signs of warming in the Arctic, Dr. Max Holmes was quoted on the uncertain future of permafrost. August 22. cnb.cx/2PyiKWn
Climate Change Is Making Trees Bigger, But Weaker. WHRC scientist Dr. Richard Houghton was quoted in Science story concerning forestry trends caused by rising temperatures worldwide. August 22. bit.ly/2BFucN8