The Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) has, over the years, shown commitment to producing timely Seasonal Rainfall Predictions (SRP) and other climate information to the public for the purpose of guiding people against climate change’s negative effects.

It has also confirmed that the SRP is based on strong observation and scientific study of the weather which application can be used in mitigating such impacts.

Stressing the importance of SRP recently in Abuja, NiMet Director-General, Sani Mashi, said that the country had been feeling the effects of climate change.

According to him, more frequent extreme weather events, increase in temperature, changes in annual and seasonal precipitation patterns, are prevailing across the country.

Mashi said that climatic variations caused rainfall variability which in turn affected availability of water resources with telling effects on agriculture.

“The quality, quantity, stability of food production and the natural environment, in which agriculture took place, are also affected in extreme cases.

“Also, the degradation of agricultural ecosystems could mean destruction of farm land due to flood or desertification.

“This can result in a total loss of the productive capacity of the land and consequently lead to increase in number of people at risk of malnutrition, poverty and famine.

“Other activities such water resources management, health sector, hydro-electric power generation and dam management, which depends on rainfall variability, are also affected.

“Similarly, conflicts over resources also exacerbate these impacts and contribute to the ongoing migration within countries in Africa.

“In this case, children and the elderly face physical danger even death due to diseases, floods, droughts and heat stress.

“Therefore, information is needed to understand climate change’s impact on agriculture and other aspects of the economy in Nigeria,’’ he said.

Mashi observed that NiMet’s annual climate review bulletin was produced to provide such information, helping policymakers to understand the uncertainties surrounding climate change effects.

“The bulletin will also give national and regional level guidance with implications for a range of policy decisions, such as investments in the development of new plant and animal varieties that are resistant to drought, water management strategies and many more policy areas,’’ he observed.

He added that part of NiMet had been monitoring and collecting different types of weather information such as temperature, precipitation and other weather parameter throughout the country over a long period of time.

“Analysis of these data has shown that there has been a persistent increase in the maximum temperature in the past decade over Nigeria.

“Similarly, the minimum temperature is also on the increase for the past nine consecutive years from 2009 to 2017,’’ he observed.

In the same vein, he said that NiMet has predicted normal to earlier-than-normal rainfall across the country in 2018 with possibility of flashes of floods in many parts of the country.

“The implication of this prediction according to NiMet is that there will be normal agricultural activities during the year leading to good yields and pumper harvest.

“That will be if NiMet warnings and recommendations in the SRP are taken seriously by the stakeholders in the agricultural sector,’’ he said.

The agency recommended that climate-smart agriculture should be encouraged, especially in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of the country through the use of economic trees like gum Arabic, date palm, shear and jetropha, among others, for fencing.

On livestock farming, NiMet warned that warmer-than-normal temperatures, predicted to occur in March and April, were expected to affect livestock production, particularly in the north-western region of the country.

It said that livestock mortality rate was expected to increase during these months due to temperature   fluctuations, advising livestock farmers to acquire necessary vaccines for their animals.

NiMet also predicted that fish production was likely to be adversely affected as a result of the warmer-than-normal conditions, especially in the northern part of the country.

It urged fish farmers and aquaculture operators to take note of those areas which were predicted to have high run-offs to avoid associated impacts.

It observed that the annual rainfall across the country would positively impact on agriculture, power generation, recreation and manufacturing activities.

The agency warned Nigerians and health officials to take adequate precautions with a view to mitigating the prevailing warmer-than-normal temperatures across the country, noting that the prevailing condition would persist until April.

It said that while the cold season dominated in January and February, heat season was predicted to dominate March and April, explaining that greater parts of the country were expected to record near average temperatures in these months, while some places would experience hotter-than-the average seasonal temperature.

The health implication of this warmer-than-normal condition during the forecast period according to NiMet is that cerebrospinal meningitis and other heat related diseases, as well as human discomfort, are likely.

It explained that diseases such as heat rashes, dehydration, measles, chicken pox, avian influenza and general human discomfort, were expected to be rampant during the period, urging health workers to make adequate preparation to contain any outbreak.

The agency added that the period also coincided with peak of the dry season when there could be shortage of drinking water leading to high chances of consuming contaminated water that might result in typhoid fever.

It, therefore, and advised state and local governments to sensitise their communities on the need to drink from clean and hygienic sources during the period.

“Health workers are advised to improve surveillance to detect cases of disease outbreak early while the populace should improve their drainage system to avoid breeding of mosquitoes and ensure that they sleep under long lasting insecticide nets,’’ NiMet advised.

By Sumaila Ogbaje, News Agency Nigeria (NAN)

Rapid greenhouse-gas emissions reductions are needed if governments want to keep in check both the costs of the transition towards climate stabilisation and the amount of removing already emitted CO2 from the atmosphere.

To this end, emissions in 2030 would need to be at least 20 percent below what countries have pledged under the Paris climate agreement, a new study finds – an insight that is directly relevant for the global stock-take scheduled for the UN climate summit in Poland later this year.

Removing CO2 from the atmosphere through technical methods including carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) or increased use of plants to suck up CO2 comes with a number of risks and uncertainties, and hence the interest of limiting them.

“Emissions reduction efforts in the next decade pledged by governments under the Paris climate agreement are by far not sufficient to attain the explicit aim of the agreement – they will not keep warming below the 2-degrees-limit,” says Jessica Strefler from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), lead-author of the analysis published in Environmental Research Letters.

“To stabilise the climate before warming crosses the Paris threshold, we either have to undertake the huge effort of halving emissions until 2030 and achieving emission neutrality by 2050 – or the emissions reductions would have to be complemented by CO2 removal technologies. In our study, we for the first time try to identify the minimum CO2 removal requirements – and how these requirements can be reduced with increased short-term climate action,” she adds.

At least five billion tons of CO2 removal per year throughout the second half of the century

It turns out that, according to the computer simulations done by the scientists, challenges for likely keeping warming below the threshold agreed in Paris would increase sharply if CO2 removal from the atmosphere is restricted to less than five billion tons of CO2 per year throughout the second half of the century. This is substantial. It would mean for instance building up an industry for carbon capture and storage that moves masses comparable to today’s global petroleum industry. Still, five billion tons of CO2 removal is modest compared to the tens of billion tons that some scenarios used in climate policy debates assume. Current CO2 emissions worldwide are more than 35 billion tons per year.

“Less than five billion tons of CO2 removal could drastically drive up the challenges of climate stabilisation,” says co-author Nico Bauer from PIK. “If for instance this amount of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) was halved, then the annual CO2 reduction rates between 2030 and 2050 would have to be doubled to still achieve 2 degrees Celsius. In addition, short-term emissions reductions would also have to be increased as the emissions reductions pledged so far by the signatories of the Paris Agreement are not sufficient to keep warming below 2 degrees if they’re not combined with CO2 removal from the atmosphere.”

“It is all about short-term entry points, like rapidly phasing out coal”

More CO2 removal could in principle reduce costs since, on paper, implementing the relevant technologies to compensate residual emissions in industry and transport is cheaper than pushing emissions reduction from 90 percent to 100 percent. However, CO2 removal technologies are afflicted with three types of uncertainties and risks.

First, the technical feasibility and also the costs are not well known so far. Second, they might have negative effects for sustainability; a massive scale-up of bio-energy production for instance could trigger land-use conflicts and come at the expense of food production and ecosystem protection. Third, the political feasibility is by no means given. In Germany, fears expressed by parts of the population made the government stop even small-scale carbon capture and storage implementation.

“This gives important information to governments – first, rapid short-term emissions reductions are the most robust way of preventing climate damages, and second, large-scale deployment of CDR technologies can only be avoided when reliable CO2 prices are introduced as soon as possible,” says Ottmar Edenhofer, co-author of the study and PIK’s chief economist.

“Ramping up climate policy ambition for 2030 to reduce emissions by 20 percent is economically feasible. It is all about short-term entry points: rapidly phasing out coal in developed countries such as Germany and introducing minimum prices for CO2 in pioneer coalitions in Europe and China makes sense almost irrespective of the climate target you aim for. In contrast, our research shows that delaying action makes costs and risks skyrocket. People as well as businesses want stability, and this is what policy-makers can provide – if they act rapidly,” he adds.

China reached its 2020 carbon emission target three years ahead of schedule with the help of the country’s carbon trading system according to Xie Zhenhua, China’s representative to UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) negotiations.

The development provides an important boost to the Paris Agreement on Climate Action, which has the central goal to limit the global average temperature increase to well below 2 degrees Celsius and as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible.

Reacting to the news on Twitter, the Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change, Patricia Espinosa, said: “Excellent news coming out of China – very encouraging as the international community seeks to accelerate the transition to low carbon and to raise ambition to achieve the #ParisAgreement #climate goals.”

Xie Zhenhua, who was formerly vice-chairman of the NDRC and is now a special envoy with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said: “(This achievement) is not only a great encouragement to me… but also the recognition of our country’s long-term efforts and achievement of coordinating of both domestic and international dimensions, transiting from tackling the challenge of climate change to promoting the historic opportunity to achieve sustainable development and pushing the transition towards green low-carbon development,” said Xie in Hong Kong after receiving the Lui Che Wo prize for his efforts to tackle climate change.

The country’s carbon emissions trading system was introduced in 2011 and includes power generation, iron and steel production and cement manufacturing sectors in seven provinces and municipalities including Shanghai, Xie said.

At the end of 2017, China had cut carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 46 percent from the 2005 level, fulfilling its commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 40 to 45 percent from the 2005 level by 2020.

It is important to note that China’s progress on climate action has not come at the price of economic growth. From 2005 to 2015, China’s economy grew by 1.48 times, and at the same time, the carbon intensity – the amount of carbon emissions per unit of GDP- dropped by 38.6 percent. In 2016, the rate continued to fall by 6.6 percent year on year.

Transactions totalling 200 million tons of carbon emissions quotas had been completed via the platform by the end of 2017.

Raising ambitions for a low-carbon future even further, the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) launched a nationwide carbon emissions trading system in the power generation industry in December 2017.

Under this programme, businesses are assigned emissions quotas, and those producing more than their share of carbon can buy unused quotas on the market from those that emit less.

Xie said the new system is a step toward establishing a national carbon market across all industries, and that the national market, though only at an embryonic stage, already covers about 1,700 power firms with total carbon dioxide emissions in excess of three billion tons, making it the world’s biggest. He noted China would continue to work to expand coverage to other industries.