ALBERT

Description: The interplay of the Indian Monsoon and the Himalayas is vital to many climatological aspects of the Himalayan foothill and foreland regions. A unique climate feature in the Himalayan foothill and foreland regions is a bi-modal diurnal cycle of precipitation with high rainfall amounts in the afternoon and around midnight. The reason for this nighttime precipitation maximum is not yet fully understood, and current climate models and also reanalyses do not represent the regions’ diurnal precipitation cycle. Nevertheless, estimating realistic spatiotemporal precipitation patterns is crucial for the climate community (e.g., for impact modelling). This study reviews discussions in the literature, available observational findings, and simulation results with the regional climate models (RCM) COSMO-CLM & ICON_CLM. Our simulations indicate that the models are not able to recover the nighttime’s precipitation behaviour with currently typical horizontal RCM grid-spacings (e.g., 10 or 50 km), but they can do so with convection-permitting grid-spacing (~3 km), which sufficiently resolves the relevant and diverse orographic thermal winds together with the moist monsoonal flow characteristics in the area.

Description: The debris cover anomaly refers to the tendency of debris-covered glaciers to show similar ablation rates as of clean ice glaciers at the same elevation despite the insulating effect of debris. Mainly, the supraglacial ice cliffs and water bodies contribute to this comparable phenomenon. Ice cliffs contribute significantly to the mass loss and resultant runoff from the glaciers. Very little is known about the ice cliff ablation rates in the Himalayan region in very short time-scales. . In this study, we scanned an ice cliff (~ 10m x 3m x 13m) on Machoi Glacier during a three-day field visit to Machoi Glacier (34.290N, 75.527E) using a FARO 350S+ Lidar scanner. We scanned the ice cliff multiple times to capture changes on hourly and daily scales. The scanner obtained a very precise and high-resolution point cloud of the ice cliff. We subsequently applied the M3C2 approach to determine the difference between the two point clouds obtained at two different time epochs. We find that the ice cliff melt varies between 0.17cm/hr and 1.97cm/hr peaking at 15.00 hours (local time, IST). On a daily scale, the ice cliff melted at a rate of 11 cm/day (0.46 cm/hr), which is tenfold more than other debris-covered areas of Machoi Glacier at the same altitude, highlighting the insulating effect. In the scenario of regional and global warming these ice cliffs tend to increase in size (or exposure) and numbers. Our results highlights that they significantly contribute to local glacier melting in very short time intervals.

Description: This policy brief explores and provides a holistic view of the existing practices, issues, and opportunities for a sustainable coastal management initiative among the G20 member countries. Specifically, it highlights coastal disaster risk reduction and resilience strategies, along with the financial implications of public investment on the need of a proper assessment of the social return of adaptation projects, and on the avoided fiscal deadweight loss. The brief also discusses the importance of funding for development projects to reach mitigation targets and the need for an evaluation framework to improve the efficiency of these adaptation efforts. The policy brief suggests establishing an initiative within the G20 to address disaster risk reduction (G20- DRR) by providing a decision support system as well as a centralized dissemination platform for quality-controlled, transparent national climate impact assessments by fostering global collaboration between institutions, researchers, and experts.

Description: One response to the numerous governance challenges faced with respect to the oceans, a shared space, is the creation of international organizations. Typically comprising of representations from member States and with pre-defined mandates, international organizations strive to resolve specific issues. This chapter will provide a categorical overview of these organizations and examine how they operate in isolation, as well as interact with each other, in striving to protect the marine environment. Given the institutional complexity surrounding the individual regimes that create them, the outcomes arrived at by most international organizations occasionally do not represent the collective interests of all member States. Nevertheless, the existence of a common avenue in which marine environmental problems can be raised and discussed as a whole has indeed resulted in the adoption of notable measures to address those problems. Such outcomes would not have been possible without the mechanics that are peculiar to international organizations. Ultimately, this analysis demonstrates the extent to which international organizations formulate the law of the sea and discern some patterns on how their efforts has advanced the protection of the marine environment in recent years.

Description: In mid-2021, the Republic of Nauru invoked a treaty provision at the International Seabed Authority known as the “two-year rule”. This effectively imposed a deadline on the Council of the International Seabed Authority to complete the elaboration and adoption of regulations for the exploitation of seabed minerals in the international seabed Area by 9 July 2023. Come 10 July 2023, the Authority would be presented with a new legal situation, whereby applications for mining activities may be submitted despite the absence of applicable regulations. There remain many outstanding matters in the negotiations and, considering that the regulations for exploitation must be adopted by consensus at the Council, it would appear that there is still a long and winding road ahead before an agreement is reached among member states – if this is at all possible. In light of this, the Council clearly needs to discuss what would occur if an application for the approval of a plan of work for exploitation activities happens to be submitted in the absence of applicable regulations. While the open legal questions that arise from the invocation of the two-year rule and upon the expiration of the deadline have been analysed elsewhere, this discussion paper examines the new political reality that the Authority finds itself in following the expiry of the deadline on 9 July 2023. Building on previous work by the author, this discussion paper attempts to underscore what is at stake at the Authority and explores how member states should approach this situation.

Description: Understanding the physical and biogeochemical interactions and feedbacks between the ocean and atmosphere is a vital component of environmental and Earth system research. The ability to predict and respond to future environmental change relies on a detailed understanding of these processes. The Surface Ocean-Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS) is an international research platform that focuses on the study of ocean-atmosphere interactions, for which Future Earth is a sponsor. SOLAS instigated a collaborative initiative process to connect efforts in the natural and social sciences related to these processes, as a contribution to the emerging Future Earth Ocean Knowledge-Action Network (Ocean KAN). This is imperative because many of the recent changes in the Earth system are anthropogenic. An understanding of adaptation and counteracting measures requires an alliance of scientists from both domains to bridge the gap between science and policy. To this end, three SOLAS research areas were targeted for a case study to determine a more effective method of interdisciplinary research: valuing carbon and the ocean’s role; air-sea interactions, policy and stewardship; and, air-sea interactions and the shipping industry.

Description: Extracting these minerals would be energy intensive and the problems experienced in terrestrial mining would be replicated at sea

Description: The ocean plays a key role in sustaining life on our planet and is inextricably linked to biodiversity, climate, human well-being, and health. However, the governance of the ocean is primarily pursued through sectoral-based legal and institutional frameworks that falls short in ensuring the long-term protection of the marine environment and the sustainability of marine resources. This is especially concerning in areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction (ABNJ) where human activities continue to expand. The existence of two distinct regimes in ABNJ, namely the High Seas (applicable to the water column, which is a global common) and the Area (applicable to the international seabed and its mineral resources, which are the common heritage of mankind), that have been largely regulated separately, impede the development and implementation of integrated marine environmental governance and biodiversity conservation in ABNJ. On the one hand, the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which is mandated to administer the mineral resources of the Area, is currently discussing a set of regulations to enable future exploitation activities. On the other hand, multilateral negotiations are taking place for the development of an internationally legally binding instrument for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (referred to as the proposed ‘BBNJ’ Instrument). Both processes offer a unique opportunity to foster an ecosystem approach to management (EAM) in ABNJ. In this article, we elaborate on options for stronger governance integration and the development of a coherent and collaborative interplay between these two processes. To this end, we explore the potential of Regional Environmental Management Plans (REMPs) established by the ISA as a case study to contribute to global biodiversity conservation, and the opportunity for the proposed BBNJ Instrument to promote overarching coherence to biodiversity conservation in ABNJ, premised on EAM. We conclude that the proposed BBNJ Instrument could have a pivotal role to streamline multilateral action for the conservation of biodiversity in ABNJ by adopting an ambitious, overarching environmental vision and strategic goals, accompanied by strong implementation and enforcement mechanisms.

Description: Current efforts at the International Seabed Authority to develop regulations pertaining to the exploitation of deep seabed minerals would benefit from a moment of reflection on the future governance of these resources. As the Area and its resources have been declared a common heritage of mankind, this principle must be taken into account when designing the future governance of activities in the Area.

Description: Shipping emissions are likely to increase significantly in the coming decades, alongside increasing emphasis on the sustainability and environmental impacts of the maritime transport sector. Exhaust gas cleaning systems (“scrubbers”), using seawater or fresh water as cleaning media for sulfur dioxide, are progressively used by shipping companies to comply with emissions regulations. Little is known about the chemical composition of the scrubber effluent and its ecological consequences for marine life and biogeochemical processes. If scrubbers become a central tool for atmospheric pollution reduction from shipping, modeling, and experimental studies will be necessary to determine the ecological and biogeochemical effects of scrubber wash water discharge on the marine environment. Furthermore, attention must be paid to the regulation and enforcement of environmental protection standards concerning scrubber use. Close collaboration between natural scientists and social scientists is crucial for progress toward sustainable shipping and protection of the marine environment.