The Scientists are floored and we should be too. The global heat and especially the extremely high temperature departures we’ve seen in the Arctic over the past month are flat-out unprecedented. It’s freakish-strange. And what it looks like, to this particular observer, is that the seasonality of our world is changing. What we’re witnessing, at this time — it looks like the beginning of the end for Winter as we know it.
Hottest January on Record — But the Arctic is Just Outlandish
Anyone who observes the Arctic — from scientists, to environmentalists, to emerging threats specialists, to weather and climate enthusiasts, to just regular people unsettled by the rapidly unraveling state of our global climate system — should be very, very concerned. The human greenhouse gas emission — now pushing CO2 levels to above 405 parts per million and adding in a host of additional heat trapping gasses — appears to be rapidly forcing our world to warm. To warm most swiftly in one of the absolute worst places imaginable — the Arctic.
Not only was January of 2016 the hottest such month ever recorded in the 136 year NASA global climate record. Not only did January show the highest temperature departure from average for a single month — at +1.13 C above NASA’s 20th Century base-line and about +1.38 C above 1880s averages (just 0.12 C shy of the dangerous 1.5 C mark). But what we observed in the global distribution of those record hot temperatures was both odd and disturbing.
(A record warm world in January shows extreme Arctic heat. NASA’s global temperature anomaly map above hints that tropical heat — spiked by a record El Nino — traveled northward and into the Arctic through weaknesses in the Jet Stream over Western North America and Western Europe. Image source — NASA GISS.)
Though the world was hot as a whole — with El Nino heat dominating the tropical zones — the furthest above average temperature extremes concentrated at the very roof of our world. There, in the Arctic lands of now-thawing glacial ice and permafrost — over Siberia, over Northern Canada, over Northern Greenland and all throughout the Arctic Ocean zone above 70 North Latitude — temperatures averaged between 4 and 13 degrees Celsius above normal. That’s between 7 and 23 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than usual for the extraordinary period of an entire month.
And the further north you went, the more heat you ended up with. Above the 80 North Latitude line, temperature averages for the entire region spiked to around 7.4 degrees C (13 degrees F) warmer than normal. For this area of the Arctic, that’s about equal to the typical difference between January and April (April is about 8 C warmer than January during a normal year). So what we’ve seen is absolutely unprecedented — for the entire month of January of 2016, temperatures were those of Springtime in the Arctic.
(For January through February of 2016, the region of 80 North Latitude and northward has experienced its warmest conditions ever recorded. Temperatures have remained in a range of -25 to -15 C for the zone — a set of temperatures more typical to those of mid to late April. Image source: NOAA.)
And for the Winter of 2016 it’s possible that the Arctic may never experience typical conditions. For, according to NOAA, the first half of February saw this record, Spring-like, warmth extend on through today. It’s as if these coldest zones in the Northern Hemisphere haven’t yet experienced Winter — as if the freak storm that drove Arctic temperatures to record levels during late December has, ever since, jammed the thermometer into typical April levels and left it stuck there.
El Nino Heat Teleconnects to Pole
Why is this all so ominous?
It would be bad if it were only a case that warmth in the Arctic just resulted in the ever-more-rapid melting of glaciers — forcing seas to rise by centimeters, inches and feet. It would be rather bad if polar warming amplified as white ice on land and over the ocean withdrew — turning a heat-reflecting surface into dark blue, green, and brown heat-absorbing feature. It would be pretty amazingly bad if such heat also resulted in permafrost thaw — again worsening human-forced warming by unlocking up to 1,300 billion tons of carbon and eventually transferring about half of that into our atmosphere. And it would be rather bad if all that extra heat in the Arctic started to meddle with the Northern Hemisphere’s weather — by altering the flow of the Jet Stream. By resulting in very persistent drought-producing ridges and storm-producing troughs.
(High amplitude waves in the Jet Stream — one over Western North America and a second over Europe — transfer lower-Latitude heat into the Arctic during an El Nino year on February 7, 2016. As polar amplification cranked up to new extremes during the record hot months of December and January, it appeared that El Nino’s ability to strengthen the Jet Stream and thus separate Equatorial heat from the colder Pole had been compromised. Image source: Earth Nullschool.)
Sadly, these events are no longer just hypothetical. The sea ice is retreating. The permafrost is thawing. The glaciers are melting. And the flow of the Jet Stream appears to be weakening.
But what if all that building polar warmth due to human fossil fuel burning had yet one more added effect? What if that hot stone tossed into the river of atmospheric circulation that we call El Nino could somehow transfer its build-up of tropical heat all the way to the Pole? What if the Jet Stream flow in the Northern Hemisphere had grown so weak that even a warm-up in the tropics due to a record-strong El Nino couldn’t significantly (through increasing Equator to Pole heat differential) speed it up. What if those new ridge zones stretched all the way into the Arctic — shoving tropical heat into the far north during El Nino events? During times when the globe, as a whole was at its hottest? During a period when heat and moisture at the surface of the Pacific Ocean was exploring a new peak due to a combination of human-forced warming and El Nino hitting the top of the natural variability cycle?
What if, somehow, that peak in tropical heat could run from the Equator all the way to the Pole?
What we would see then is an acceleration of the dangerous Arctic changes described above. What we would see is a coupling of the global warming related polar amplification signal with the top of the natural variability warm scale that is El Nino. And for the non-Winter in the Arctic that was the first month and a half of 2016 that’s what it appears we’ve just experienced.
The scientists are floored. Well, they should be. We should all be.
Links:
Scientists are Floored By What’s Happening in the Arctic Right Now
Warm Arctic Storm to Unfreeze the North Pole
Jennifer Francis on Warming Arctic’s Impact on the Jet Stream
Hat Tip to TodaysGuestIs
David Goldstein
/ February 18, 2016Robert – seems silly but I am sooooo appreciative of this simple sentence: ” at +1.13 C above NASA’s 20th Century base-line and about +1.38 C above 1880s averages (just 0.12 C shy of the dangerous 1.5 C mark). But what we observed in the global distribution of those record hot temperatures was both odd and disturbing.” A Washington climate reporter AND atmospheric scientist wrote an article yesterday about the January warmth and cited the 1.13 C as approaching the 1.5C mark. I wrote her, pointing out that, actually, the 1.5C is based upon the 1880-ish baseline NOT the 1951-1980 baseline and that the “approach” is much closer than she indicated. She thanked me. Geeze….should be pretty basic stuff.
robertscribbler
/ February 18, 2016The goal posts need to stay at 1880. People unconsciously try to move them. It’s human nature to react in that way. But we need to keep a clear picture of what’s going on. My view is that we should all use 1880 as the base line. The global monitors should do the same. It would be easier for me that way. I wouldn’t have to math 😉
ccgwebmaster
/ February 19, 2016It was slightly irksome when NSIDC moved their baseline forwards a decade, made everything look a bit better than I think it really is.
A. Randomjack
/ February 19, 2016I totally agree one the 1880 mark. Having studied marketing other basis of comparison looks more like a publicity stunt to pink up that sour pill.
I have been out of the loop for about 4 months for personal reasons of course.
I plan to translate this article of yours for my French blog as I previously did for some of your excellent work.
Take care and keep fighting 🙂
Jack
A. Randomjack
/ February 22, 2016Hello Robert
Article translated/adapted to French (with some add-ons because I had been away for so long) and posted here http://leclimatoblogue.blogspot.ca/2016/02/pas-dhiver-en-arctique-pour-2016-et.html
Thank you very much
Jack
A. Randomjack
/ March 15, 2016Hello Robert
I just noticed this… I’m a bit late.
Could you please double check the temperature of January 2016.
Yours is cooler than December 2015 (at 1,4°C) but January 2016 should be warmer…
Thank you very much
Take care
Jack
climatehawk1
/ February 18, 2016Tweeted.
dnem
/ February 18, 2016Glad to see you back Robert. The impact of all of the above on the current state of the ice is pretty stunning too (as you know!).
robindatta
/ February 18, 2016Has the pace of change reached terminal velocity yet?
Sent from my iPad 🙏🏻
>
Tom Bond
/ February 18, 2016Great post Robert, in a 1000 words you have explained the significance of all this alarming data coming from various sources with respect to rising global temperatures and in particular the rapidly rising arctic temperatures.
I also agree that all temperature rises should be bench marked against the 19th century average not the 20th century average, just to emphasis how close we are to +1.5C and that the time for complacency is over.
redskylite
/ February 18, 2016Has a tipping point been reached, is this the new Arctic normal, only time will tell.
A reminder from Rice University, big changes can happen quickly and dramatically and we shouldn’t get complacent for the kind, accommodating graduality of Climate Change so far. Beware Earth has an accelerator pedal and we are stepping on it big time.
“We found that about 10,000 years ago, this thick, grounded ice sheet broke apart in dramatic fashion,” Anderson said. “The evidence shows that an armada of icebergs — each at least twice as tall as the Empire State Building — was pushed out en masse. We know this because this part of the Ross Sea is about 550 meters (1,804 feet) deep, and the icebergs were so large and so tightly packed that they gouged huge furrows into the seafloor as they moved north.”
http://news.rice.edu/2016/02/18/colossal-antarctic-ice-shelf-collapse-followed-last-ice-age-2/
Oale
/ February 19, 2016Commencing a gear shift to 2nd gear, everyone ready? I guess by 2025 there’s no doubt anywhere this thing is moving way faster than linear. Some things already likely are, but the stats proof is difficult due internal variability.
Ryan in New England
/ February 18, 2016Remember in December when it rained at the North Pole? I had made a comment on how this might be seen in retrospect as the beginning of the end of Winter in the Arctic. I never thought it would be two months later we would be saying there is no Winter in the Arctic! This is absolute insanity. And according to the mainstream news, everything is fine and we need to go shopping more. I think it’s safe to say we are going to blow through the 2C benchmark faster than the 1C threshold. If we stopped emissions tomorrow we would easily break 1.5C, yet we are nowhere near stopping even a percentage of our emissions. We are on the doorstep of 1.5C and nobody (other than us and those few others like us) even cares. Forget about discussing this topic, nobody even knows about what’s happening. No matter how much I raise alarm bells with everyone I know, people care more about consuming than having a future for their kids that’s survivable. This is the single biggest reason I haven’t, and never will, have children. It’s really hard to stay optimistic.
On the positive side, it’s great to have you back Robert. We missed you for a few days 🙂 Fantastic post, by the way!
NevenA
/ February 19, 2016I’ve added a link to this piece at the end of the latest blog post on the Arctic Sea Ice Blog, describing what is currently happening to the ice pack on both sides of the Arctic: An exceptional exception
Ryan in New England
/ February 19, 2016Thanks Neven!
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016Thanks for this, Neven. Fantastic, comprehensive article there. I wonder if Beaufort cracking will be seen as rejuvinative in the long term or more or less a sign of overall fragility. Perhaps the 2013 bounce was moreso due to the relatively cool Winter by comparison. In any case, the ice edge is really taking a beating this year. And I wonder about an overall lack of accumulated cold for the season. The difference between -20 and -30 is a good degree of added latent heat. That’s an additional fragility to cryosphere systems we should probably consider.
ccgwebmaster
/ February 19, 2016If we had an ice free Arctic this summer, or near enough to – it would vindicate Wadhams, and the PIOMAS extrapolations, one might say.
Regardless, things are changing faster and faster and more and more. It won’t be possible for any single person to keep up with the pace of events – whether authoring articles or even just reading them… excepting at the largest levels, and unfortunately the key developments often have their roots in smaller origins.
Ryan in New England
/ February 19, 2016It looks like the U.S. is single handedly responsible for up to 60% of the increase in methane emissions. The increase in emissions coincides with the boom in shale oil/fracking that started in the early 2000s.
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/us-60-percent-of-global-methane-growth-20037
A. Randomjack
/ February 19, 2016I was just reading this
Paper shows Significant Increase in Methane Emissions in U.S.
http://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2016/02/17/paper-shows-significant-increase-in-methane-emissions-in-u-s/
Check that graphic!
Ryan in New England
/ February 19, 2016Great link. That graphic is striking. I’m pretty sure that paper was the basis for the article at Climate Central. The numbers referenced are identical.
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016Bridge fuel to a climate nightmare in the making. We have cheap solar now. The fact that we are now locking in these added emissions is unconscionable.
Scott
/ February 19, 2016Don’t worry, the rest of the world is excited by the opportunities that shale fracking offers. China, Russia, and parts of Europe will be catching up soon. We just got a jump-start here in the US.
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016What a mess…
Bill H
/ February 19, 2016Scott, but why should anyone be excited by fracking, especially for natural gas, which would appear to be the main fuel extracted? Quite apart from its environmental effects nat-gas fracking has been an economic disaster. See for instance:
http://peakoilbarrel.com/collapse-of-shale-gas-production-has-begun/
Basicially, fracked gas cost over $6 per 1000 cubic feet to produce, yet the price of gas has been well below this level throughout the “fracking boom”. Investors are being fleeced after falling for a load of worthless claims by the fossil fuel industry.
Miep
/ February 19, 2016https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/glacier-cave-explorers–3#/
Ryan in New England
/ February 19, 2016Here’s a good article by Bill McKibben/Tom Dispatch on Exxon, and damage they have caused us all with their deception, and campaign to inject doubt into the sound science of climate change.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/exxons_never-ending_big_dig_20160218
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016So for three and a half decades Exxon Mobile has basically been engaged in what amounts to information warfare aimed at locking in a severe climate catastrophe they knew would happen. One they took some token steps to prepare their own assets for while failing to understand the all-encompassing nature of the problem. Meanwhile as these paltry and inadequate preparations (even from the myopic position of only protecting company assets) took place, they actively misled and misinformed the public even as they polluted the political process to inflict wholesale inaction for years and decades.
I do not think a more reprehensible and malicious business entity has ever existed on the face of this Earth. One that would put the lives of every living thing beneath the value of its continued corporate profit. Short sighted hubris does not even begin to describe what to me appears to be an awful and muderous engine. Mass extinction is the true end of this thing that should never be identified under such an innocuous title as enterprise. What else could you say about an entity that is actively trying to lock in geocide?
Cate
/ February 19, 2016They are corporate psychopaths.
That is not an exaggeration. Google “psychopath and CEO” to find all the parallels between heads of corporations and your garden-variety homicidal maniac. They have no morality or vision beyond the bottom line and they will murder millions to achieve their goals. Btw, they also own all the news media and will buy what they don’t already own. This is what our poor old planet and all the little people on it are up against: this mighty 1%, this cabal of corporatists, who are growing richer and more powerful by the hour, and who are simply the most ruthless killing machine ever devised by humanity.
Andy in SD
/ February 19, 2016If you look at the daily satellite images for the Arctic, and zoom in, one of the items you will notice is the non contiguous nature of the ice. It is a fractured mess. Northern Canada is the last bastion of multi year ice, it too is fractured. What should be contiguous, or large solid portions of sea ice are now much smaller. They will expose water to sunlight sooner as they drift apart and melt. The chunks of ice will have a more vulnerable thermal density, thus have a lower expectancy of remaining as ice at the end of summer.
This does not portend well for resilience when the melt comes.
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016Huge polynyas opening up in the Beaufort. It looks like 2013. However, it’s much warmer overall in the Arctic this year.
reformfaanow
/ February 19, 2016Studying the Arctic sea ice extent chart blogged daily at NSIDC, it stands out that the ‘peak’ extent in 2014 happened on February, the earliest date in the dataset, and well before the ‘average’ date of March 13. This year, we have already had three timeframes with record low sea ice extent, and as of today, ice is 2% behind last year and well beyond 1% below the previous record low. And, the trend these last few days is a declining extent.
All of this, combined with the facts/data in this Post, point to a scary possibility that we are now meeting ‘Game Over’ for polar ice.
Anthony Colombo
/ February 19, 2016Thanks for another great article!
I remember back when you were talking about how the blob/RRR and related changes in the Arctic would serve to block the California drought busting capacity of El Nino. Well it took me a while to understand all that you were alluding to and now it seems to be coming to pass. Now with this article you are adding to that, if things weren’t ominous enough. All the energy that would have delivered moisture to California now seems to be sealing its doom by further heating the arctic to the point where even powerful future El Nino’s will just become drops in the bucket.
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016Call me nuts, but I really like to put in those nuggets. Sometimes making people think is more than worthwhile. There’s a difference between telling and attempting to enlighten — even if it is in the exploration of a difficult subject. Thanks for being such an insightful reader.
Jay M
/ February 19, 2016Looking at PNW storms over the last three months it is striking how all the energy seems to drive into the north, catching Alaska various places. We (Columbia R. area) have got very decent moisture, but California is so far not getting a cornucopia.
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016The Jet plows across the Pacific, then it splits, firehose-like as it hits that hot pool of water off the West Coast. There’s too much heat, too much northward pull on the storm track. Something’s gotta give. It’s SoCal rains and Arctic heat so far.
Mark from OZ
/ February 19, 2016Good grief!
One would have thought the difficult and tragic lessons sadly learnt by our ancestors, the hominins, back in the middle Pleistocene around the danger to ‘life’ in creating big fires in enclosed spaces would have never been forgotten.
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016Are there instances of mass hominin deaths around cave fires due to suffocation? If so, you’re right. You’d think it would be come a deeply ingrained fear.
Mark from OZ
/ February 20, 2016G’day RS!
Hard to find evidence of ‘mass’ death amongst our forebears (anecdotal,likely) but ‘accidental’ CO poisoning still accounts for > 40k ER visits and ~ 5500 deaths in the USA alone.
Deliberate CO poisoning may be 10 x the accidental! It’s also the leading cause of poisoning in the industrialized world and can increase after power outages (i.e. hurricanes) when insufficient care is applied wrt to IC engines (generators) and fuel burning devices for heating.
My original comments were emotionally and desperately driven and were lamenting our collective ignorance and failure (still) to appreciate that building a fire ‘out in the open’ is not much different to building one in a cave as the atmosphere IS a finite volume and confined space too.
Related link to recent ‘find’ in SA on those remarkable beings that preceded us:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22730383-700-new-species-extinct-human-found-in-cave-may-rewrite-history/
Note: No suggestion that their likely use of fire was inexpert.
PS Great to have you back and ‘participating’ with so much gusto.-T’is no surprise that all the seats ‘up front’ in your virtual lecture hall are occupied; ‘here’ is an extraordinary place of learning!
ATB!
marcyincny
/ February 19, 2016Well then one would have forgotten how easily humans are distracted by shiny things, beads, chrome, plasma displays…
Vic
/ February 19, 2016This seems a rather important discovery, although I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.
“Small amounts of neutral red were injected 80 metres underground at three sites into the water-saturated coal seam. A fivefold to tenfold increase in methane production was observed during a 12-month period.”
https://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/study-tiny-red-crystals-dramatically-increase-biogas-production-could-reduce-need-new-coal-seam
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016Why we mess with this stuff is beyond me. It’s like playing dice with the devil.
Phil
/ February 19, 2016Great post Robert. Brought everything together nicely. So many things happening at once.
Saw the JISAO January PDO value came in positive at 1.53, up from December 2015 value of 1.01. Will be interesting to see where it goes this year. Have had two solid years now of positive values.
Would be interesting to know if/how this also contributes to potential teleporting of heat from equatorial pacific to the Arctic, even if only by making El Nino’s either more common or more powerful.
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016The hot blob seems a persistent and reinforcing feature of the current positive PDO. It’s also aiding the Arctic-Tropic teleconnection over NE PAC and Western North America. North of Europe, we have a similar feature in the form of an abnormally warm Barents. These two regions appear to be the primary launching pads for these anomalous warm air invasions now building up over the Arctic.
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Hi, Robert.
Long time no see. 🙂
– Tweet below may show some of that behavior.
Leland Palmer
/ February 19, 2016Thanks for the great article, Robert. Good to have you back. 🙂
It would be nice if Arctic warming slows down as El Nino fades, and we get a couple of cooler years. It would be nice if the glacial melt outflow from Greenland slows down Arctic warming. Many things would be nice, but conditions have changed so much it is hard to know what to expect, other than chaos.
Some of the most rapid warming is in Siberia, and over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) and Siberia is a long way away from Greenland. I guess there are some mountain glaciers on Siberian islands, but those look relatively small in this video showing ice mass loss derived from GRACE gravimetric satellite data:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/details.php?id=1062
Hansen once said that before we could have low level runaway global warming, the ice caps would have to melt. Looking at the graphic of Arctic temperatures you show, it seems possible to have a full blown methane catastrophe in the Arctic especially around the ESAS while Antarctica remains relatively intact. It also seems possible that CO2 and methane emissions from melting and rotting permafrost could act as a bridge between fossil fuel forcing and a full blown methane catastrophe including methane hydrate dissociation..
Even in a CO2 dominated atmospheric warming scenario there is very likely to be greatly increased methane emissions from the hydrates into the oceans. So a CO2 dominated atmospheric warming scenario could still have hypoxic and badly acidified oceans, I think.
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016OK. So this is rather speculative. But it seems we have about enough carbon in the Permafrost to bump CO2 up by around 100 ppm atmospheric. The question is rate of release. Current science is more on the moderate side.
The scientific discussion on clathrate release has basically gone dark. We have established scientists taking a very conservative tack on rate of release and impact to oceans and we have some others who are at a pretty extreme opposite end of the argument. Some of those on the methane emergency end are calling for geo-engineering while attacking climate policy which makes me wonder a bit RE motivations.
For my part, I’m going to do my best to get the highest possible quality information to you guys. I think though that it’s pretty clear that we can’t ID a strong methane release signal for the Arctic at this time and that is some cause for consolation in all the rest of the tough news.
But we are pushing the Arctic pretty hard right now.
Leland Palmer
/ February 19, 2016The forum you provide is very much appreciated, Robert.
I’m personally not in favor of geoengineering unless it’s part of a unified and potentially effective plan to draw down CO2. I’m in favor of emergency deployment of alternative energy technologies, an end to all fossil fuel subsidies, legal action to charge the fossil fuel corporations climate damages, and Bio-energy with Carbon Capture and Storage, especially if the storage is in situ mineral carbonation.
I’m not a climate scientist, so I feel uncomfortable disagreeing with the established climate scientists. But I have 30 years of experience in analytical chemistry laboratories doing analytical chemistry method development – a process of scientific investigation that demands forming, testing, and discarding hypotheses on very short time scales and finding out immediately whether I was right or not.
The methane hydrate dissociation scenario as outlined by Dickens seems to me to be the best general hypothesis to explain a series of mass extinction events. It appears to provide good predictions, and it also seems to provide quantitative predictions that actually check out. The increased explanatory power, predictive ability, and unifying ability of the methane hydrate dissociation general theory of mass extinctions makes it the best hypothesis, I think. It’s a shame that the best general theory of mass extinctions predicts disaster for humanity, absent massive and effective emergency action.
I think the fossil fuel corporations did not like the climate science they were seeing a decade or two ago, so they went out and bought some climate science they liked better.
But, no, Dickens was right, I think.
Down the Rabbit Hole: toward appropriate discussion of methane
release from gas hydrate systems during the Paleocene-Eocene
thermal maximum and other past hyperthermal events
http://www.clim-past.net/7/831/2011/cp-7-831-2011.pdf
“The total mass of carbon stored as CH4 in present-day marine
gas hydrates has been estimated numerous times using
different approaches as reviewed in several papers (Dickens,
2001b; Milkov, 2004; Archer, 2007). Prior to 2001, several
estimates converged on 10 000 Gt, and this “consensus mass”
(Kvenvolden, 1993) was often cited in the literature. However,
the convergence of estimates was fortuitous because
different authors arrived at nearly the same mass but with
widely varying assumptions; an appropriate range across the
studies was 5000–20 000 Gt (Dickens, 2001b). In the last
ten years, estimates have ranged from 500-2500 Gt (Milkov,
2004), ∼700–1200 Gt (Archer et al., 2009), and 4–995 Gt
(Burwicz et al., 2011) to 74 400 Gt (Klauda and Sandler,
2005). The latter is almost assuredly too high (Archer, 2007).
The others are probably too low”
The total mass of carbon stored as methane in present-day marine gas hydrates is the most important number to humanity of all time, I think. Unfortunately, that number is known best to the oil corporations that have done the exploration work, and they have multiple motives to spin it as a low number.
Of the low estimates listed by Dickens, Archer co-authors scientific papers with ExxonMobil chief scientist Haroon Kheshgi and Milkov worked for British Petroleum at the time he made his estimates of total hydrate mass. Burwicz claims to be a global warming alarmist, but makes very confusing statements about global warming widely quoted on Fox News.
We really need to know whether we have 0.004 trillion tons of carbon as methane in the hydrates or 74.4 trillion tons, and allowing that information to be best known by the oil corporations is very, very foolish. At the low end of the range, CO2 only warming scenarios are appropriate and we will be fine. At the high end of the range, we could be looking at the mother of all mass extinctions, even if dissociation rates are very low. Likely, we have about 10 trillion tons of carbon in the marine gas hydrates, like Dickens said. But we are coming out of a series of ice ages with cold ocean temperatures favoring hydrate stabiity, so it could be more.
A. Randomjack
/ February 20, 2016May I suggest this link to you
http://arctic-news.blogspot.ca/
The information there is not published in scientific papers, but the information seems highly correct in many respects
Then the is http://paulbeckwith.net/
He’s a paleo-climatologist at the University of Ottawa and is often interviewed at
http://www.ecoshock.info/ a very good radio show on climate and the environment I listen to every week 🙂
Hope you enjoy
Jack
robertscribbler
/ February 20, 2016So there are a number of nuances here that we need to be aware of. The first is that powerful methane feedbacks do not have a clear signal yet in the global monitors. In addition, though feedbacks and responses to the human forcing do and probably will ramp up, they are unlikely to hit a pure exponential curve. Nature tends to swing wildly, especially as systems become destabilized. But, also, there are boundaries beyond tipping points that establish new equilibriums. This is not to say that what we are doing isn’t extraordinarily dangerous. That we won’t hit accelerating rates of change in a number of systems. It’s just to say that following the top trend curve often isn’t accurate or realistic. For example, if we had just followed the curve on Arctic sea ice melt from 2007, we would have gotten to a blue ocean event in 2012. There was some speculation that this might have been possible. But it didn’t happen. We had a bit of a bounce back in the overall melt trend and a pull back toward a more linear, albeit far steeper than what IPCC predicted during the mid 2000s, trend line during 2013 and 2014.
The takeaway here is that we can tend to exaggerate both a conservative approach to climate impacts and an extreme one. We have to be very careful not to double count the amplifiers nor to lean too far toward faith in systems inertia.
The situation is probably, therefore, somewhat worse than conservative mainstream science suggests. However, I think it’s fair to say that it’s better than a pure exponential warming scenario. We need to be aware of these outside risks. But let’s be clear and not be hypnotized by them. It’s also worth noting that some among this community pointing out the very worst case are also pushing for solar radiation management. And that is a very dangerous and unlikely to succeed response to human forced climate change. I’d also warn that the geo-engineering approach will probably be the final, dangerous fall-back of a fossil fuel industry trying to find a rationale for its continued existence against the growing concerns of a justifiably outraged public.
Leland Palmer
/ February 21, 2016Hi Robert-
I agree with most of that, and appreciate the great information available here. Certainly, fossil fuels just have to go, and trying to fix the atmosphere through geoengineering sounds a lot like trying to tune up an automobile engine by throwing wrenches at it. What we want is to return to the atmosphere (and the oceans) of a century or two ago, not try to create a new atmosphere that compensates for fossil fuel burning by artificially induced global dimming, and allow the oceans to morph into hydrogen sulfide producing purple bacteria covered oceans.
I have to admit a certain amount of dismay at some of the stuff from Sam Carana and arctic.blogspot. It seems somewhat exaggerated to me, too, and the time scale is accelerated beyond what I would expect.
I’m not sure we can take much comfort in the fact that present day methane emissions from the hydrates appear to be low, though. Due to anerobic and aerobic oxidation of methane being such an efficient process, any methane emitted now would show up mainly as CO2, and we are seeing anomalous ocean acidification of deep water due to CO2, off the coast of Washington and Oregon. We are seeing anomalous algae blooms in the Arctic and off the Pacific Northwest, possibly tied to increased methane production from the hydrates and acidification.
Modeling by the now defunct IMPACTS (of abrupt climate change) group of universities and national labs (apparently quietly defunded by the DOE around 2013) shows that it takes 30 or more years for the pulse of heat from a sudden change in ocean temperatures to work its way down into the hydrates and produce peak methane emissions.
Even if methane emissions are moderate at first we may not be prepared for the huge impacts of methane emissions from the hydrates on the oceans. This modeling by the IMPACTS group shows a plume of anoxic and acidic water at year 40 of their modeling stretching from the Siberian Sea of Okhotsk, across the Bering Straight, flowing down the coast of North America all the way to Baja California, then wandering out into the Pacific, returning to the coast of South America, and wandering down the coast of South America. And that is from a hydrate emissions scenario that shows only low emissions from the hydrates.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2010JG001300/pdf
Marine methane cycle simulations for the period of early global warming.
Check out figure 2 to see the map of the methane saturated water plume referred to above.
Only after the hydrates have been emitting for decades, and entire ocean basins become anoxic, might we see large emissions from the hydrates into the atmosphere, according to the IMPACTS group modeling.
And at that point it might really be too late to do anything about it.
RS Comment:
Leland — This comment is deeply buried in the forum notes now so I’m just going to reply here if that’s OK.
I’ve got to say that I wholeheartedly agree with much of what you say here. Not that I think that hydrate release is inevitable. But that I do see it as a risk. I’m somewhat concerned by discrepancies in the global monitors (Copernicus vs Metop) that I’ve recently become aware of, though, coupled with the general knowledge that most of the methane emissions in Copernicus coincide with wildfires and human sources (which is pretty consistent with the IPCC findings).
I like Sam. And I think he does some good observational work. However, in light of more recent science, we should probably take a broader look at the methane issue for now. And I don’t think we are on some inevitable ramp of unchecked feedbacks that is pretty far outside both model and paleoclimate understandings. Given current forcings, I think we’ve locked in a range of 2 C warming for this Century and 4 C warming long term if GHG levels were to stabilize (that includes earth system feedbacks and may include a moderate permafrost and hydrate response).
I think that if we were to stop human ghg emissions now the net effect of feedback + drawdown of human gasses (loss of methane due to interaction with hydroxyl and some drawdown of CO2 into oceans) would about be matched by the scale of feedbacks we’ve already locked in. We could possibly bend the curve down by changes in land use and BCCS or other practices.
But I do think the risks for stronger feedbacks increase as the human forcing increases. Hitting 550 ppm CO2e net forcing would result in very bad outcomes in my view — resulting in a moderate risk of a longer term runaway to a PETM/Permian type warming. The reason is that this level is enough to melt pretty much all of the land ice and to unlock the carbon stores that have been sequestered in frozen land and hydrate over the past 60 million years.
Leland Palmer
/ February 22, 2016Oh, corrections to the above post:
The figure I was thinking of in Elliot et al. 2011 is actually figure 4, not figure 2. It is a polar projection, and is a little hard to read, but it does show that the poorly ventilated North Pacific around the Sea of Okhotsk and stretching across to the western coast of North America is a region of very low oxygen concentration after 30 years of methane release. Oxygen concentration actually goes down to zero in the Sea of Okhotsk, and is near zero for hundreds or thousands of miles in this plume.
The authors also published a correction to figure 7 in that paper:
http://api.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/asset/v1/doi/10.1029%2F2011JG001725/asset/image_n%2Fjgrg849-fig-0001.png?l=Cgg2pVVsCMxYtYfYYCugyGOdPwlc6N%2B%2F6DOeIuS6chbhyaJfLxaj7XBNbT%2FOFxdgKshQn6QcysE%3D&s=%22b3ca27395bb74027a5445913995b3db2%22&a=wol
The correction shows that direct methane transfer from the oceans into the atmosphere increases as the simulation goes on, reaching an average value of about 60 percent after 30 years. After 30 years of methane hydrate dissociation by their modeling, the oxidation capability of whole ocean basins has been exhausted, leading to direct transfer of an average of close to 60 percent of the methane released by the hydrates into the atmosphere.
Leland Palmer
/ February 23, 2016Let’s see if we can get those scary graphs to show up. One picture is worth 1000 words:
If this works it will show the % methane making it through the barrier of the oceans into the atmosphere as ocean basins have their oxidation capacity overwhelmed by hydrate dissociation, according to the IMPACTS group modeling
Testing, testing…
robertscribbler
/ February 23, 2016Post the link. I’ll see if I can put it up.
Leland Palmer
/ February 23, 2016Oh, poopy. 😦 Foiled again 🙂
Leland Palmer
/ February 23, 2016Hi Robert-
Thanks a lot. The corrected figure 7 from Elliott et al. was the one I wanted to post. The huge seasonal swings and the increasingly large fraction of methane making it through the barrier of the oceans as individual ocean basins become hypoxic is the scary part, I think.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JG001725/full
Here’s what they say about this corrected figure 7:
“In the paper “Marine methane cycle simulations for the period of early global warming” by S. Elliott et al. (Journal of Geophysical Research, 116, G01010, doi:10.1029/2010JG001300, 2011), a mistake was made in the creation of Figure 7, which erroneously showed that only a small fraction (about 1%) of the inert methane tracer released from the ocean sediments into our model escaped to the atmosphere. The correct Figure 7 and its caption appear here. As can be seen in the corrected Figure 7, a much larger fraction is actually released to the atmosphere in this simulation (about 60%).”
They make this point about basin scale exhaustion of oceanic capacity to oxidize methane in some of their other papers like “Basin-Scale Assessment of Gas Hydrate Dissociation in Response to Climate Change”.
Thanks for all you do, Robert.
robertscribbler
/ February 23, 2016The paper finds that up to 60 percent of hydrate release transferring across the ocean surface boundary after oxidation saturation scenario is reached during an early warming is a pretty big deal. Worth noting that the more anoxic the ocean becomes, the more gas from hydrate destabilization makes its way to the surface. Also worth noting that the uncorrected version was more frequently cited.
For future reference the code is *open bracket* img src= insert image url here *slash closed bracket*
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Our ‘blue’ planet seems to be getting a bit bluer.
– Definitely less white at the top.
– And, as K, Vonnegut put it: “So it goes…”
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will
13. “So it goes.”
Unlike many of these quotes, the repeated refrain from Vonnegut’s classic Slaughterhouse-Five isn’t notable for its unique wording so much as for how much emotion—and dismissal of emotion—it packs into three simple, world-weary words that simultaneously accept and dismiss everything. There’s a reason this quote graced practically every elegy written for Vonnegut over the past two weeks (yes, including ours): It neatly encompasses a whole way of life. More crudely put: “Shit happens, and it’s awful, but it’s also okay. We deal with it because we have to.”
🙂
http://www.avclub.com/article/15-things-kurt-vonnegut-said-better-than-anyone-el-1858
dnem
/ February 19, 2016Love this, DT. And love KV. My wife’s signature on emails, etc. is David Byrne’s take on same. “Same as it ever was.”
Mblanc
/ February 20, 2016I like SNAFU, which is kind of similar.
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Dateline Fiji:
Anthony Sagliani @anthonywx 3h3 hours ago
Those on main Fiji islands should be preparing for worst possible outcome.
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016dtlange
/ February 19, 2016Vic
/ February 19, 2016Hell of a way to cool down Fiji’s coral bleaching event.
Also, “Another deadly threat lies in the wake of Winston — the presence of Zika virus in Tonga could spread easily in a response situation,”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-18/zika-spread-in-tonga-as-tropical-cyclone-winston-approaches/7182112
redskylite
/ February 19, 2016New York Times had an in depth piece on Zika 18th Feb –
Zika Outbreak Could Be an Omen of the Global Warming Threat
With rising temperatures, “You’re actually speeding up the whole reproductive cycle of the mosquitoes,” said Charles B. Beard, who heads a unit in Fort Collins, Colo., studying insect-borne diseases for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “You get larger populations, with more generations of mosquitoes, in a warmer, wetter climate. You have this kind of amplification of the risk.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/19/science/zika-outbreak-could-be-an-omen-of-the-global-warming-threat.html
redskylite
/ February 19, 2016ARS Technica on WHO’s plight and all the rife conspiracies . .
Conspiracy theories, wonky rumors, doubts buzz around Zika, hassle WHO
at a recent scientific conference Christopher Dye, WHO director of strategy, brushed off the theory. Absolute numbers are always hard to nail down, he told Ars, but the trends are informative and impossible to ignore in this case.
Until there’s more data, the WHO, along with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recommend that pregnant women and women planning on becoming pregnant take precautions to prevent Zika infections and avoid traveling to Zika-affected areas.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/02/conspiracy-theories-wonky-rumors-doubts-buzz-around-zika-hassle-who/
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Keep in mind that we know that global warming and climate disruption would increase the migrations and ranges of various pathogens, etc. — and their vectors. Zika being only one.
On the other end, some are hindered or destroyed — the expansion contraction of habitat of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’.
Or, something like that.
– OUT
Vic
/ February 19, 2016Herpes related viruses seem to be popping their heads up more and more these days in ecosystems around the world.
Here’s a new study looking at how corals on the Great Barrier Reef are impacted by them during bleaching events.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-19/herpes-like-virus-impacts-coral-on-barrier-reef-during-bleaching/7183888
So this would mean high sea surface temperatures are merely another vector for these beasties, to be exploited whenever possible.
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016— Surprise (To me.) ‘Info Resource’ found while researching Fiji (Oceania).
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/fj.html
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Robert,
Below, are you aware of this site I came across, and now mutual Twitter followers?
Any insights to them? They seem to parallel your scope(s).
https://twitter.com/CntrClimSec
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Repost of comment;
dtlange / February 15, 2016
Worldwide Threat Assessment: Climate Magnifying Instability
The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held a hearing on Feb. 8, 2016 on the Worldwide Threat Assessment, which is released by the National Intelligence Council every year. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s opening statement included mention of a range of threats. With regards to climate change, he noted:
Unpredictable instability has become the “new normal,” and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future…Extreme weather, climate change, environmental degradation, rising demand for food and water, poor policy decisions and inadequate infrastructure will magnify this instability.
http://climateandsecurity.org/2016/02/10/world-wide-threat-assessment-climate-magnifying-instability/
Jeremy
/ February 19, 2016Watch Doublespeak.
“Doublespeak highlights the contradictory actions of President Obama and the British Prime Minister, David Cameron when it comes to addressing the urgent threat of climate change.
The film uses archive footage from speeches and news reports to paint a picture of how politicians continue to ignore the science on climate change in order to appease their friends in the fossil fuel industry”
http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/doublespeak-a-film-about-climate-change/
Damn politicos – screw ’em all,
Jeremy
/ February 19, 2016Listen to this week’s Radio Ecoshock – and say good bye to the Great Barrier Reef.
Indian Coal consumption going through the roohf.
“Australia fires climate scientists while expanding coal. Ellen Roberts of GetUp! reports. From Netherlands, scientist Arjen Hoekstra finds 4 billion people in water scarcity. From Hong Kong, Stuart Heaver on nuclear fear next door”
http://www.ecoshock.info/2016/02/hard-news-troubled-planet.html
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– I’ve been enjoying listening to this 1953 lecture by J. Robert Oppenheimer via BBC titled The Sciences and Man’s Community via BBC
The Reith Lectures, Robert Oppenheimer: Science and the Common Understanding: 1953
– I love the depth and width of his compassionate intellect and his speaking.
– The only way to listen is to download mp3 file for later listening. I often download lectures and then listen on headphones as I lay in bed at night.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00hg2d6
Ryan in New England
/ February 21, 2016That’s a great link. Thanks dt 🙂 Back in the 1950s this country was so much more supportive of science. We respected and appreciated the intellectuals and scientists, and strove to lead the world in science and education. Kids dreamed of being astronauts and engineers and chemists and physicists. The adult populace acted like adults and would never support a candidate like Trump or Palin, who embrace ignorance and proudly dismiss any facts that contradict their evidence-free view of the world.
Hilary
/ February 19, 2016Tropical Cyclone Winston has now been upgraded to category 5 & its track predicted to be more due west, straight over Fiji’s main Island:
http://www.met.gov.fj/aifs_prods/65648.html
-sorry cant manage to insert image showing this. :-((
Poor Fiji & the Fijians just don’t need this sort of battering!
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Tonga & much of Oceania too.
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Indeed…
Hilary
/ February 19, 2016Thanks Dt
Vic
/ February 19, 2016Here’s a good resource for viewing up to date info on cyclones. There’s also data on floods, fires, droughts, earthquakes and more.
http://www.pdc.org/solutions/tools/global-hazards-atlas/
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016pdc.org is;
Pacific Disaster Center
1305 North Holopono Street, Suite 2
Kihei, HI 96753
– Thanks, Vic.
Bill H
/ February 19, 2016The worst damage will be to the left of the eye of the storm (onshore winds here) …. that means the capital city, Suva.
Vic
/ February 19, 2016Even more up to date info here at RS Bill H. 😃 Thanks.
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Meanwhile in N. Atlantic. Lots of weather action.
NWS OPC @NWSOPC 23s24 seconds ago
Numerous areas of at least gale force in the N Atlantic including a developing hurricane force system later today…
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– 0950 UTC PDX
“Good grief.” – Charlie Brown
– Good night. 🙂
dnem
/ February 19, 2016Same as it ever was. And so it goes…
Kevin Jones
/ February 19, 2016Overheat the Arctic surface= overcool the Arctic stratosphere. Presto:
http://www.phys.org/news/2016-0s-strong-ozone-depletion-arctic.html
Kevin Jones
/ February 19, 2016http://www.phys.org/news/2016-02-strong-ozone-depletion-arctic.html
Kevin Jones
/ February 19, 2016In late Feb. or was it early March of 1992 I stood beside this craft in a hanger in Bangor, worried about our future…..
Vic
/ February 19, 2016I stood beside this craft back in 2009.
Three years later she escorted her captain all the way down to Davy Jones’ locker in the midst of Hurricane Sandy.
I’m worried about our future too.
Vic
/ February 19, 2016Vic
/ February 19, 2016Her name was the Bounty.
“Everybody in the boat !”
Kevin Jones
/ February 19, 201624 years ago. Enough to make me feel as old as Colorado Bob!
Cate
/ February 19, 2016I follow the Greenland threads over at Arctic Sea Ice Forum (even though much of the techtalk escapes me—still, you can pick up the gist). There are animations and discussion here of the most recent changes in the Jakobshavn Isbrae, which is the main source of icebergs in my corner of the NW Atlantic.
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,154.1250.html
Cate
/ February 19, 2016Still on Greenland—-here’s a thread, updated today, on the lesser-known Store glacier, just north of Jakobshaven. A mini-clearing-house of info on this glacier.
http://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,1462.0.html
JPL
/ February 19, 2016This is an hour long talk plus Q&A by Kevin Anderson a few weeks ago from the London School of Economics. Very sobering conversation about what it will really take to meet the 2 C. target.
Sorry if this is a re-post but didn’t recall seeing it here.
John
todaysguestis
/ February 19, 2016Thanks!
JPL
/ February 19, 2016One of his comments that really stuck with me is his assertion that 2 C global average temp increase means 6 C increase at the poles. Ouch.
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– That’s pretty recent at Feb 9, 2016. KA tells it like it is.
Mblanc
/ February 20, 2016To my mind, KA is one of those scientists of whom we can justifiably be proud.
Mblanc
/ February 21, 2016I have seen this most excellent lecture before, although he has updated bits and pieces.
The first thing that strikes me is that the LSE probably counts as a ‘tough room’ for KA (note how he clocks the head shaking skeptics fairly early on), as far as UK academic institutions are concerned. It’s funny how they filmed this without showing his Powerpoint stuff, which renders it almost useless to the uninformed viewer. It makes me wonder why it is like that, then I remember this is the LSE! Other versions of this lecture are available, and have been posted here before, and I would recommend those.
I’m now going to watch the Q+A, and I’ll comment if it is interesting.
Mblanc
/ February 21, 2016So the Q+A was entertaining, especially the last q, which was roughly, ‘there you are telling us we, as relatively rich folks, need to cut our emissions radically, what are you doing to cut your emissions?’
This is the Al Gore question, and KA laughs for a moment, then smashes it out of the park! 🙂 I think he has been asked it before.
So KA is a vegetarian, who has cut his (old camper van) road mileage by two thirds, and has downsized from a house to an energy efficient flat. But his killer response is that he has not flown for 11 years and, as it turns out, when he went to China, he went by train! Just to repeat that for clarity, Manchester to Shanghai by train.
Now I checked this and it takes 2 days to get to Moscow, around 2000 miles. Then it is a matter of popping on the Trans-Siberian line for the 7 day, 5000 mile journey to Shanghai, via Bejing! Then he came back the same way…
Having said the lecture is hamstrung by the inability to see the powerpoint elements, the Q+A, from 60 mins onwards is very interesting, and I must just mention the question querying the lack of outrage from the scientific community.
Well, you can see the outrage in KA, and no mistake.
wili
/ February 21, 2016I agree that Kevin Anderson is perhaps the most straightforward communicator among major climate scientists of where we actually stand. I try to remind myself, though, that in spite of the lure of essentially endless quantities of fossil fuel money on the one hand, and the threat of endlessly cruel threats on job, family and life and limb on the other, nearly all climate scientists have at least stuck to their science. If you step back a bit, that is an amazing human achievement in and of itself!
But yes, we still desperately need lots more scientists to stand up and tell us where we really are in the clear terms that KA does here and elsewhere. But really, that burden is also on each of us who has come to understand the gravity of the situation at whatever level–we need to me megaphones/magnifiers of the clearest voices in the scientific community; they shouldn’t have to do all the heavy lifting by themselves.
Much as I treasure rs’s blog (and I do treasure it dearly), I am quite amazed and distressed that there aren’t really hundreds to thousands of blogs of this caliber and clarity on these ultimate issues of our time with million, no billions of people following and posting on them.
This and neven’s site seem to me to be the best. Skeptical Science and RealClimate have their strengths and faults, but mostly put out good info. But then there seem to just be a smattering of others, most of which either don’t really have climate as a main focus (POForums environmental thread, for example, which also suffers troll swarms) or which are not very active either in main posts or responses to them (for example the wonderful but underused ClimateState linked on the right hand column).
Are there lots of other good ones out there that I just don’t know about?
todaysguestis
/ February 21, 2016Wili you ask ‘Are there lots of other good ones out there that I just don’t know about?’
I recommend: https://tamino.wordpress.com/
Mblanc
/ February 21, 2016Tamino is a good shout, another strong voice, but Wili is right there should many more robust voices.
I guess that humanity will look back and see that the ‘Climate Wars’ contain some the worst houndings, that mainstream science has witnessed. The UEA guy at the centre of the climategate emails witch hunt was, as I understand it, a broken man long before he was exonerated.
When KA says that if you talk to climate scientists in a relaxed, informal environment, they will tell you a somewhat different story to that which they will tell in a lecture theatre, one can attack the individual scientists. But I think it is more balanced view is that it is to see it as an indication of just how powerful corporate interests are, in the here and now.
I think that KA was right when he said (in response to a question) that we can all be leaders in our own smaller worlds of friends, families etc.
My close friends have just bought a BMW i3, so I went and had a look at this impressive piece of engineering today. The vehicle is not a perfect solution, and is only a small part of the massive job we have to do, but individual folks can lead by example, and we should endeavour to support/emulate them.
todaysguestis
/ February 19, 2016Catastrophic Cyclone Winston bears down on Fiji’s main island in worst case scenario
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/02/19/catastrophic-cyclone-winston-bears-down-on-fijis-main-island-in-worst-case-scenario/
Caroline
/ February 19, 2016(http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/2/26/1189952/-Global-warming-awareness-at-the-Birkebeiner-ski-race)
I am in NW Wisconsin where this event is to take place tomorrow. The weather here is very, very grim. Winter in a death spiral —– sheets of rain pouring out of the sky combined with strong warm winds. The forests look terribly ill. The ecosystems here are diminished with biodiversity decreasing—it seems—by the minute.
Is it fair to say the seasons as we knew them(those of us who have been around 30+ years or more) are gone for good?
I will be interviewing skiers at the start line of the Birkie tomorrow via WOJB, public radio. It will be hard not to ask those interviewed their thoughts on this climate catastrophe. It feels more like a funeral than a festive “winter” event.
Robert, I passed along this latest post to the morning host who referenced it after an interview with someone from Citizen’s Climate Lobby. We received quite a few positive responses.
Colorado Bob
/ February 19, 2016From The Missoulian the best description of the Milankovitch cycles ever, with supporting findings-
Global warming overriding historic cycles
DON MICHELS
http://missoulian.com/news/opinion/columnists/global-warming-overriding-historic-cycles/article_b6842b93-b040-5b88-8bd4-bc773f143b4d.html?error=Unable+to+verify+user+session
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Nice perspective from that piece.
THX
Planet In Distress
/ February 19, 2016Robert,
How do I contact you privately? I would like to discuss a project that I could use your help on. If you are interested, I will be in Silver Spring Mon/Tue of next week and we could meet to discuss. Perhaps you could block me and then I could send you my email?
Colorado Bob
/ February 19, 2016The JTWC forecast :
FORECASTS:
12 HRS, VALID AT:
200600Z — 17.0S 178.8E
MAX SUSTAINED WINDS – 160 KT, GUSTS 195 KT
WIND RADII VALID OVER OPEN WATER ONLY
Here’s a conversion table –
160 knots = 184.125mph
195 knots = 224.402 mph
Colorado Bob
/ February 19, 2016The JTWC plot of this thing is just nuts
Colorado Bob
/ February 19, 2016robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016Just tied with the two most powerful cyclones for the SE PAC basin. Still strengthening …
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016dtlange
/ February 19, 2016Anthony Sagliani @anthonywx 57m57 minutes ago
Devastating cat-5 TC Winston edging steadily closer to large Fiji Islands.
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016dtlange
/ February 19, 2016dtlange
/ February 19, 2016dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Guardian
Fast-growing tumbleweed called hairy panic blows into Australian city
Dry grass piles up around homes in Wangaratta, north-east Victoria – at times reportedly reaching roof height
…
Hairy panic – Panicum effusum – is a short-lived perennial native to inland Australia. Outbreaks of the weed take place across the country every year but Wangaratta has been hit particularly badly this year because of dry conditions.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/18/fast-growing-tumbleweed-called-hairy-panic-blows-into-australian-city?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Version+CB+header&utm_term=157675&subid=8553955&CMP=ema_565
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016Climate & Security @CntrClimSec 26m26 minutes ago
Here’s a list of some of the most frequently asked climate security questions. Add yours via submit a question page
FAQs
Below is a list of some of the most frequently asked “climate security” questions.
Is climate change a security risk?
Will climate change cause wars?
Where is climate change the biggest threat to security?
Why do militaries care about climate change?
How does climate change compare to other security risks?
…
http://climatesecurity101.org/faqs/
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016Hey DT,
Thanks for the welcome back earlier.
I think this is a good basic list. However, it doesn’t capture the full breadth of climate risk. No mention of expanding wildfire risk, increasing disease vectors and potentially new emergent diseases, impacts to ocean health and transition to stratified or Canfield ocean states, changing ocean states introducing new toxins to the water and, eventually, the atmosphere, risk of loss of life due to extreme heatwaves (although this could come under extreme weather), impacts to the hydroxyl sink and, possibly, ozone, cascading ecological impacts including mass extinction stress growing more and more pervasive, geophysical changes due to reduced ice mass and changes in ocean mass balance, loss of human habitats and liveable climates. It’s not just sea level rise, food and water impacts, mass migration, and extreme weather.
Also, it’s not just an existential risk to low lying island nations. At 2 C warming this Century it’s an existential or collapse risk to a host of nations. At 4 C that group includes a majority of nations on Earth.
I appreciate that they mention risks to fixed energy infrastructure. Most of these facilities — by necessity — border rivers, lakes and oceans. All will be pushed hard by droughts, floods, and sea level rise. It’s one reason why I stump so vigorously for modular renewables. They’re a much less vulnerable kind of infrastructure.
John McCormick
/ February 20, 2016Add to the list “food riots and collapse of governments”
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016– Yes, and your efforts at offering remedies are much appreciated. Remedies and preventative measures have to be stressed and put into action.
I try to that, as well. 🙂
– Other than that, I do like to see how, what/or not, others are attempting or gathering data on. Any that are common to other efforts, I share with.
There are many pieces to this fluid and dynamic puzzle — understatement.
Take care.
TALLY HO
DT
dtlange
/ February 19, 2016dtlange
/ February 19, 2016– Another USA record high superseding 1930. Hmmm — the old dust bowl days.
NWS St. Louis @NWSStLouis 1h1 hour ago
#StLouis has set new daily record high of 77° today. Old record of 76° was set in 1930. #stlwx
robertscribbler
/ February 19, 2016Long range forecast shows major drought risk emerging for that region this spring and summer. Although, given what’s happened to the El Niño rains, I wouldn’t be surprised if the SW is involved as well.
Andy in SD
/ February 20, 2016If it wasn’t for groundwater that area would have been in trouble some time ago. Problem is the rate of extraction, they are slurping up a finite resource.
It is like a lower insanity version of the wheat farms in Saudi Arabia.
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016– Significant weather 2015-16
We’ve had super strong cyclone/hurricanes (Patricia and Winston) in both oceans Pacific and Atlantic — both sides of the equator.
Check this out (Winston). Will Fiji/Tonga wash away…?
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016– Via A. Sagliani:
Scenes like a ship at sea with decks awash.
Cyclone Winston: Incredible conditions in Savusavu, Fiji | 20 02 2016
Vic
/ February 20, 2016Savusavu, Fiji.
Vic
/ February 20, 2016At its centre, Cyclone Winston is generating gusts of up to 315 kilometres an hour, with average winds of 230 kilometres an hour.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-20/cyclone-winston-reaches-fijis-biggest-islands/7186792
Vic
/ February 20, 2016Vic
/ February 20, 2016“Strongest cyclone ever recorded in Southern hemisphere”
https://www.facebook.com/iCyclone/?hc_location=ufi
Vic
/ February 20, 2016The US government’s typhoon warning centre said gusts from the cyclone were reaching 360km/h (224mph).
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/feb/20/cyclone-winston-virgin-australia-and-jetstar-cancel-services-to-and-from-fiji
Vic
/ February 20, 2016Taveuni, Fiji.
Vic
/ February 20, 2016Suva, Fiji.
Abel Adamski
/ February 20, 2016One for Plaza Red
We will be forever grateful and hold a special place in our hearts for these guys, the Spanish Men’s Rugby Sevens team.
They are in a training camp at Uprising for 3 weeks as they attempt to qualify for core team status in on the World Rugby Sevens Series in Hong Kong.
They dropped everything without hesitation to assist us as the ocean swells took charge of our waterfront late this afternoon.
We know that we will be cheering for 2 teams this year in Hong Kong, our beloved Fiji and our brothers from Spain! Gracias Amigos!
Abel Adamski
/ February 20, 2016http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/77104170/Cyclone-Winston-Live-developments-as-Fiji-hit-by-storm
Abel Adamski
/ February 20, 2016The latest
Abel Adamski
/ February 20, 2016For current status.
Appears to be moving off shore
https://twitter.com/intent/user?screen_name=metofficestorms
todaysguestis
/ February 20, 2016Drought ends in Brazil’s Sao Paulo but future still uncertain
Water levels at the main reservoir in Brazil’s largest city of Sao Paulo have more than doubled since the El Niño climate phenomenon ended a two-year drought, although industrialists and activists warn fresh shortages may be just a matter of time.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-water-idUSKCN0VR1YJ
redskylite
/ February 20, 2016Those Pacific Islands are very vulnerable to sea level rise and increased intensity cyclones, still a marked reluctance to accept their plight. Artificial Islands a solution for the future ? seems like a plan . . .
Go for it Kiribati ..
Kiribati is hoping to build artificial islands in a bid of saving the low-lying nation from rising sea levels that look set to turn it into a modern-day Atlantis. President Anote Tong said they are seeking help from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) engineers to work out how they could feasibly create artificial islands to protect the country from future climate change.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/climate-change-kiribati-turns-artificial-islands-save-nation-atlantis-fate-1544942
Abel Adamski
/ February 20, 2016That missing Arctic cold is making it’s presence elsewhere
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/20/us/tropical-cyclone-winston-fiji/
Also covering the freezing cold in Taiwan and Hong Kong
todaysguestis
/ February 20, 2016reformfaanow
/ February 21, 2016Looks like a very good film, created by a citizen-activist taking care to document what agencies and the mainstream media want to deny. Thanks for posting this.
todaysguestis
/ February 21, 2016That’s exactly what it is 🙂
Abel Adamski
/ February 20, 2016Winston is leaving Fiji
http://www.weatherwatch.co.nz/content/cyclone-winston-storm-makes-history-centre-tracking-away-fiji-photos-rain-radar
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016Kevin Jones
/ February 20, 2016Scripps and NOAA are reporting what appear to be record high CO2 in their hourly averages. Either side of 407 ppm. DMI showing +11C Arctic surface temp. spike for area 80 degrees N to 90N. NASA’s Arctic Ozone Watch showing troublesome stratospheric O3 depletion. Arctic Sea Ice Extant takes another drop….. raining here in New Hampshire this morning in February. (the birds are singing…)
Colorado Bob
/ February 20, 2016KJ –
Smashing records here again today , for the 3rd day in a row. 25F degrees above average.
All part of this little party –
Phoenix hits 90 degrees; earliest in Arizona’s history
http://www.havasunews.com/news/phoenix-hits-degrees-earliest-in-arizona-s-history/article_4e9a6bd2-d5f8-11e5-a271-9b1b862ad194.html
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016– Further North at 7000 Ft. Flagstaff:
…
This weekend will continue that warming trend with tomorrow’s sunrise at 7:08am and high of 60 degrees, which is 15 degrees above average.
http://www.naztoday.com/weather/flagstaff-weather–feb/youtube_316d00a2-d737-11e5-a2dd-5b28253e2ef2.html
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016Ryan in New England
/ February 22, 2016It was 60F here in Connecticut yesterday, and 50s today. The air smells of Spring, and all the birds an animals are active as if it were early April.
Colorado Bob
/ February 20, 2016‘Ice age blob’ of warm ocean water discovered south of Greenland
New research published in Scientific Reports in February indicates that a warm ocean surface water prevailed during the last ice age, sandwiched between two major ice sheets just south of Greenland.
Extreme climate changes in the past Ice core records show that Greenland went through 25 extreme and abrupt climate changes during the last ice age some 20,000 to 70,000 years ago. In less than 50 years the air temperatures over Greenland could increase by 10 to 15 °C. However the warm periods were short; within a few centuries the frigid temperatures of the ice age returned. That kind of climate change would have been catastrophic for us today.
Link
Mblanc
/ February 20, 2016Interestingly, this piece of research comes out of the Centre for
Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate in Tromso, Norway.
I guess this institution is of some interest to posters on here. Worth a look, I think
https://cage.uit.no/
Colorado Bob
/ February 20, 2016Glup –
Colossal Antarctic ice-shelf collapse followed last ice age
“This continent-enveloping ice sheet extended all the way to the continental shelf, and in western Antarctica it filled the entire Ross Sea basin.” ………………………. In western Antarctica, the Ross Sea is characterized by a continental shelf that extends nearly 1,000 miles from the coast and is as much as 3,500 feet deep. Anderson said the geologic record shows that as recently as 18,000 years ago the entire Ross basin was filled with ice that was so thick and heavy it was grounded on the seafloor all the way to the edge of the continental shelf.
“We found that about 10,000 years ago, this thick, grounded ice sheet broke apart in dramatic fashion,” Anderson said. “The evidence shows that an armada of icebergs—each at least twice as tall as the Empire State Building—was pushed out en masse. We know this because this part of the Ross Sea is about 550 meters (1,804 feet) deep, and the icebergs were so large and so tightly packed that they gouged huge furrows into the seafloor as they moved north.”
Read more at: Link
Colorado Bob
/ February 20, 2016dtlange
/ February 20, 2016” an armada of icebergs….”
Cate
/ February 20, 2016Newfoundland long-range forecast analysis by the local CBC meteorologist. The North American Ensemble Forecast System and Global Ensemble Prediction System charts show high probabilities for above-normal temps in Greenland for the next 15-30 days.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/ryan-snoddon-one-month-before-spring-1.3455834
Kevin Jones
/ February 20, 2016Arctic Sea Ice Area and Extent now both below where they were 10 days ago. CT and NOAA Both in record low time-of-year territory.
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016Exposing the Big Game
/ February 20, 2016Reblogged this on Exposing the Big Game.
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016dtlange
/ February 20, 2016– Relating to my earlier comment:
– Significant weather 2015-16
We’ve had super strong cyclone/hurricanes (Patricia and Winston) in both oceans Pacific and Atlantic — both sides of the equator.
‘Last year, Hurr Patricia became strongest in NHem. Today, #TCWinston breaks SHem record.’
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016‘Meteorologist Bob Henson said that prior to landfall, Winston attained a “nearly ideal environment for intensification.” Exceptionally warm ocean temperatures egged on by a record-strength El Niño were a big reason why Winston was so strong. At one point, satellite-based intensity estimates of Winston were a perfect 8.0 on an 8.0 scale. Winston also took a very atypical track to arrive in Fiji, making landfall from the East—the opposite of the usual direction—which may have left residents unprepared, and amounts to a worst case scenario for the island chain.’
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/20/cyclone_winston_batters_fiji.html
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016‘Winston comes less than four months after Hurricane Patricia broke the Western Hemisphere strength record, and likely the Northern Hemisphere record as well. Patricia’s top sustained winds were estimated at 215 mph based on an extrapolation from U.S. research aircraft flying through the storm. Winston and other recent super intense Pacific storms, like Haiyan which made landfall in the Philippines in 2013, didn’t have that sort of direct measurement.
Ironically, earlier this week, Fiji became the first country in the world to formally ratify the Paris agreement on climate change, which commits its signatories to reducing emissions…’
– slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/20/cyclone_winston
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016– Jeff Masters and Bob Henson at WU
On Friday afternoon, Winston was in a nearly ideal environment for intensification, with wind shear a moderate 10 – 15 knots, excellent upper-level outflow channels to both the north and the south, and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) near 31°C (88°F). These SSTs are about 1.5°C (2.7°F) above average. Unusually warm waters extend to great depth, giving Winston a high Tropical Cyclone Heat Potential (TCHP) in excess of 75 kJ/cm^2, a value which is often associated with rapid intensification. Satellite imagery on Friday afternoon showed that Winston had a large area of heavy thunderstorms concentrated in a donut shape around a 18-mile diameter eye, with very few outer spiral bands. This structure may qualify Winston as an “annular” hurricane–a special subclass of hurricanes which are more resistant to weakening than regular hurricanes.
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/fiji-pounded-by-its-first-category-5-storm-on-record-tropical-cyclone
…
Ryan in New England
/ February 22, 2016Was thinking the same thing. All over the globe, in every part of the ocean we are seeing some of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded, and seeing hurricanes where there haven’t typically been hurricanes. As with everything these days, if you step back and look at the larger picture you see the fingerprints of anthropogenic warming all over. It’s very clear, and very troubling.
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016– History 1935:
On September 2, 1935, Labor Day, the hurricane reached a peak intensity of 892 mb. The hurricane made landfall later that night as a Category 5 storm, crossing the Florida Keys between Key West and Miami, FL. As it made landfall, the hurricane delivered maximum sustained winds of approximately 298 km/h (185 mph).
http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/1930s/LaborDay/
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016-keyshistory.org/HT47
‘HT47-1935 Hurricane’
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016– ‘Catholic ‘climate cardinal’ says Florida politicians have duty to act’
Cardinal who helped write historic encyclical speaks at St. Thomas University climate panel
Church embraces solar and plans on meeting with manufacturers
Cardinal Peter Turkson, Pope Francis’s chief advisor on climate change and considered a contender for next pope, spoke at St. Thomas University on Friday. Jenny Staletovich Miami Herald Staff
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article61387222.html
dtlange
/ February 20, 2016-In February 2014, the village of Vunidogoloa on Vanua Levu became the first community in Fiji to relocate because of coastal erosion and flooding attributed in part to climate change. The village moved to higher ground two kilometers inland. Image credit: Nansen Initiative, courtesy UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
– WU
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ February 20, 2016“In an effort to strike back at record-breaking EV sales, the fossil fuel industry is allegedly funding a new organization that will spend $10 million a year to push petroleum-based transportation fuels and attack government subsidies on EVs, refining industry sources told the Huffington Post.
“According to HuffPo, a Koch Industries board member and a veteran Washington energy lobbyist will be involved in the purported EV-squashing initiative.
“’I think they (are) approaching all the major independent refiners,’ one industry source explained to HuffPo.
“The mission of the still-unnamed group will be to ‘make the public aware of all the benefits of petroleum-based transportation fuels,’ the source said, adding that “the current administration has a bias toward phasing out” these fuels.
“‘(The Kochs are) worried about state and community subsidies.’ the source said. ‘In 20 years, electric vehicles could have a substantial foothold in the U.S. market.’
“Oil baron brothers Charles and David Koch of are two of the four richest Americans according to Forbes, holding more than $80 billion combined in net worth. It’s an open secret that the conservative oil barons have funneled eye-popping sums of money to curry influence in their favor, including nearly $1 billion to GOP candidates for the 2016 presidential election as well as vicious campaigns against climate change and renewable energy. … ”
http://ecowatch.com/2016/02/19/koch-brothers-war-on-evs/
Mblanc
/ February 21, 2016Kochs by name, cocks by nature!
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016Trump wins South Carolina –
Madness… Madness
redskylite
/ February 21, 2016Bridge over the River Kwai was a most brilliant film, which I watched at a local flee pit/cinema as a small boy, the whistling theme still echoes in my eyes. Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson seems a model for the most ardent climate change denier. Madness its Madness part of me is still stuck in the early 1980’s and you just lit up a light bulb in my mind.
A. Randomjack
/ February 21, 2016Hello again
Everyone refers to 1880, but our industrial era really began in 1750 (ish)
If we want to take that in account, we need to add 0,2°C on top of that +1,38°C
So, here we are at + 1,58°C above the true beginning of the industrial era 😦
http://www.climatecodered.org/
Andy Lee Robinson
/ February 21, 2016Here’s an Arctic Death Spiral for January…
It’s going to be an interesting year.
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– It looks like there’s be some open (blue) water up there –not good.
THX
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– A bit weather action off the PNW:
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– Actually this one:
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– Or, “What’s your vector, Victor?
Mblanc
/ February 22, 2016That is another fine example of genuine leadership, it can’t be an easy thing in a country as vast as the US.
KA spoke movingly of his uncle in Australia, whose health was failing. To know that you will never see a family member again, because of your commitment to leadership, shows the kind of sacrifices we all need to face up to.
Dr Peter Kalmus, I take my hat off to you!
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016‘I’m a Climate Scientist Who Doesn’t Fly’
It took three years to quit air travel. Here’s one man’s carbon-cutting journey.
I’m a climate scientist who doesn’t fly. I try to avoid burning fossil fuels, because it’s clear that doing so causes real harm to humans and to nonhumans, today and far into the future. I don’t like harming others, so I don’t fly. Back in 2010, though, I was awash in cognitive dissonance. My awareness of global warming had risen to a fever pitch, but I hadn’t yet made real changes to my daily life. This disconnect made me feel panicked and disempowered.
Then one evening in 2011, I gathered my utility bills and did some Internet research…
This picture came as a surprise. I’d assumed that electricity and driving were my largest sources of emissions. Instead, it turned out that the 50,000 miles I’d flown that year (two international and half a dozen domestic flights, typical for postdocs in the sciences who are expected to attend conferences and meetings) utterly dominated my emissions.
Hour for hour, there’s no better way to warm the planet than to fly in a plane…
However, the total climate impact of planes is likely two to three times greater than the impact from the CO2 emissions alone. This is because planes emit mono-nitrogen oxides into the upper troposphere, form contrails and seed cirrus clouds with aerosols from fuel combustion. These three effects enhance warming in the short term.
http://m.thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/02/17/Climate-Scientist-No-Fly/
http://m.thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/02/17/Climate-Scientist-No-Fly/
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016‘I’m a Climate Scientist Who Doesn’t Fly’
It took three years to quit air travel. Here’s one man’s carbon-cutting journey.
I’m a climate scientist who doesn’t fly. I try to avoid burning fossil fuels, because it’s clear that doing so causes real harm to humans and to nonhumans, today and far into the future. I don’t like harming others, so I don’t fly. Back in 2010, though, I was awash in cognitive dissonance. My awareness of global warming had risen to a fever pitch, but I hadn’t yet made real changes to my daily life. This disconnect made me feel panicked and disempowered.
Then one evening in 2011, I gathered my utility bills and did some Internet research…
This picture came as a surprise. I’d assumed that electricity and driving were my largest sources of emissions. Instead, it turned out that the 50,000 miles I’d flown that year (two international and half a dozen domestic flights, typical for postdocs in the sciences who are expected to attend conferences and meetings) utterly dominated my emissions.
Hour for hour, there’s no better way to warm the planet than to fly in a plane…
However, the total climate impact of planes is likely two to three times greater than the impact from the CO2 emissions alone. This is because planes emit mono-nitrogen oxides into the upper troposphere, form contrails and seed cirrus clouds with aerosols from fuel combustion. These three effects enhance warming in the short term.
http://m.thetyee.ca/Opinion/2016/02/17/Climate-Scientist-No-Fly/
– Robert, please delete my earlier two link post.
Must discipline my mouse. you know. 🙂
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016DTL –
I like the Twitter links mostly, I used the Monarch Pass one today. But sometimes they read as gibberish. And one must hunt and peck for the meat of the thing. And I never signed on it , I thought 140 characters was the last step in the dumbing down of Western Civilization. Where we all had the attention span of a gerbil.
Insert smiley face here.
By the way, we all pay attention to your hard work here. If this doesn’t work-out , I can get you a job in grocery store a cross the street . “Fellow says you’re going to be ‘Cracker Jack’ clerk ”
‘Cracker Jack’,
Insert 2 smiley faces here.
“It’s good steady work”
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– Yeah, and with a ‘prize in every box’.
So it goes…
Thanks.
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– And, good tweets are hell to write but these short bursts of newsworthy links are a good way to scan for an important link or informative graphic. A page of tweets hold quite a few ‘headline’ type bits from those I wish to hear from. And pass on to others.
For me it’s easy to scan for kernels of info.
Plus I can go the latest tweets from any one of them to see what’s up.
As it is, my time, and attention spans, are usually available in short bursts.
Ryan in New England
/ February 22, 2016Bob, the 140 character attention span was another step in dumbing down of America…Trump becoming the Republican nominee for President is the final step in that process. This nuthouse has become Lord of the Flies, overrun and ruled by stupid children with no knowledge, wisdom or intelligence, and emotionally dominated by fear, afraid of what they don’t understand, which happens to be everything.
John McCormick
/ February 22, 2016Ryan, You pegged it. We are in the land of the Lord of the Flies. It had a bad ending.
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016DTL –
The best time of my life was in Torrance, California on Saturday mornings. In a very old Tandy Leather store at Supulvada and Hawthorne . I taught my customers leather work for free,
I had two rules , No religion, no politics.
Every Saturday we worked to this sound track
Leaving Torrance was the great mistake of mt life.
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016A junkie stole my sound system when I transferred to Vegas.
Stole it right under my nose.
2 weeks after I got there, a customer asked me, “Well what do you think of Vegas?”
I replied, “Mister. I’ve been in some shit holes, but this one is the biggest , and the most well lite one yet”
I had to walk over needles to take out the trash.
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016I fell apart. I was lost. I left for Texas. I would give anything to have stayed in Torrance. and those Saturday mornings.
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– A Las Vegas bit for Bob. Anything can and will happen in that electrified desert outpost.
– Pardon the following riff on US culture:
The now deceased Hunter Thompson went on his ‘Fear and Loathing’ trip to Las Vegas because he couldn’t take the heat of the L A Sheriffs after they had killed L A Times reporter Ruben Salazar with a pointed tear gas projectile to the head.
Thompson should have stayed in the trenches of East L A — and covered for the slain Salazar.
Instead drove wild eyed to Las Vegas where he embedded himself in a hotel full of drunken District Attorneys on convention. Thompson was there to cover , I think, a desert car race — punk assignment .
We got ‘Gonzo-izm In Las Vegas’.
Of course I read, and got enjoyment from every word of his screeds. And he also lucked out to have Ralph Steadman illustrate his pieces.
But most of all Rueben Salazar went down in LA — and Hunter just split.
OUT
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– It’s good music all right.
Elmer Bernstein (RIP) used to come into the bookstore where I used to work. A very nice man and easy to talk to.
Sometimes I would mention some old film he scored.
Ps In the late 50’s and early 60’s I spent a lot of time on the other side of Baldwin Hills in Culver City. Movie and TV studios a couple blocks away. Many ‘field trips’ through the back lots of Desilou and RKO. I knew the back side of what movie viewers saw on the screen — plywood, paint, and 2×4’s…
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016Those mornings when this was on, everyone was there just. to learn. I played the entire soundtrack . Sometimes I had 12 students. I taught them everything I knew for free. They just had to buy my glue.
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016None of my students have ever forgotten buying glue from me.
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016I am a crazy old man with a keyboard, That’s the beauty of today.
Before me.
Every crazy old man had to die alone.
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016Deal with it.
CNN
6 dead in Kalamazoo County shooting spree; suspect in custody.
Your odds of being murdered by an Islamist Terrorist attack are 5,000 percent lower than being shot by a 3 year old child.
3-year-old accidentally shoots mother in head
http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2016/02/3-year-old_accidentally_discha.html
redskylite
/ February 21, 2016Colorado Bob – you are not a crazy old man, you are an experienced old man, who’s contributions to this blog are appreciated by it’s readers. You have had a colorful and rich life, do not doubt it.
reformfaanow
/ February 21, 2016Nah. Me thinks he is a crazy old man. At a time when we desperately need crazy old men bold enough to speak up. More of us should hope to become crazy old men. Keep at it, Bob!
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016An ocean of guns will solve all our problems.
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016We just shoot every one who doesn’t think like us.
The failed artist said,
60 million people died.
Vic
/ February 21, 2016Interesting to see how sea surface temps have dropped in the Fiji region over the last week.
And somewhat disturbing to see the Great Barrier Reef heating up. GBR has escaped bleaching so far in this current global bleaching event, but for how much longer ?
Vic
/ February 21, 2016Here’s what happened on the Great Barrier Reef during the last two bleaching events.
doug
/ February 21, 2016I thought this was a graph describing American citizens.
Vic
/ February 21, 2016I don’t blame you Doug. That’s simply uncanny!
But let’s hope the real numbers aren’t actually worse than presented.
I’ve just realised I took that chart from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which is an Australian Government run organisation with demonstrated links to the coal and gas industries. Oops.
If I search the Guardian for “GBRMPA corruption” I get 24 results in 0.19 seconds.
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016Vic –
America is headed a fool as it’s leader. All bets are off.
Vic
/ February 21, 2016Vic
/ February 21, 2016After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
You can hear happiness staggering on down the street
Footprints dressed in red
And the wind whispers Mary…
robindatta
/ February 22, 2016Trump trumps Hussedn:
Vic
/ February 21, 2016The significance of coral reefs as global carbon sinks— response to Greenhouse
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/092181819190117F
“…Thus, coral reefs at present act as a sink for 111 million tonnes C yr−1, the equivalent of 2% of present output of anthropogenic CO2. In the short term Greenhouse scenario (100 yr) we predict this could increase to the equivalent of ∼ 4% of the present CO2 output. In the much longer term (several centuries), if all trends continue, this could increase to the equivalent of as much as ∼ 9% of the present CO2 output.
Unfortunately, we also predict that this considerable sink for C will be most likely of negative value in alleviating Greenhouse because of the immediate effect of CaCO3 precipitation is to raise the PCO2 of the surface oceans — ie, to encourage CO2 efflux to the atmosphere. We do not attempt to quantify this effect.”
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016redskylite / February 21, 2016
Colorado Bob – you are not a crazy old man, you are an experienced old man,
Hell is coming breakfast. Buckle chin your strap.
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016Guns. Guns.Guns. If we all had just one more gun. Every thing would be so much better. Except for that 23 year-old, who was shot in the head by her 3 year-old.
Guns. Guns.Guns. If we all had just one more gun.
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– To me guns (urban especially) at root are the total absence of problem solving.
Colorado Bob
/ February 21, 2016Vic / February 21, 2016
After all the jacks are in their boxes
And the clowns have all gone to bed
Great song …………….. But the clowns are running for the President of the United States of America.
Vic
/ February 21, 2016I’m still tipping Al Gore for 2020. Seriously.
Ryan in New England
/ February 22, 2016Vic, imagine how different this world would be if the Supreme Court (of which Scalia was influential) never took the 2000 election from Gore. We probably wouldn’t be in Iraq. Which, if we never destabilized the region so much we probably wouldn’t be dealing with ISIS. We would not have taken a surplus from the Clinton era and turned it into a multi-trillion dollar deficit from multiple wars and massive tax cuts for the richest among us. And most importantly, we would have made so much more progress in reducing emissions and transitioning to renewables. We would have avoided a decade of securing oil and gas resources throughout the middle east by way of our military. Things would be far different if Bush never stole the Presidency.
Vic
/ February 22, 2016Eric Thurston
/ February 21, 2016A begrudging acknowledgement in the NY Times about climate change just possibly having something to do with the spread of tropical diseases.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/world/americas/in-zika-epidemic-a-warning-on-climate-change.html
A. Randomjack
/ February 21, 2016After 2 years of being nearly 100% immersed in climate change…
I have to say this is the best blog around.
Thank you very much Robert 🙂
And yes, keep fighting.
reformfaanow
/ February 21, 2016The Arctic temperature distribution chart in this post led me to pondering, and I created a related Post: What Happens if Arctic Ice Seasonally Disappears?
http://aireform.com/what-happens-if-arctic-ice-seasonally-disappears/
Thanks for your working so hard, Robert, and having so many great participants on this blog.
Andy in SD
/ February 22, 2016Thanks for that.
I read your post and it explained the moderating effect extremely clearly. A very good read!
Thanks again.
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– Bob, ICYMI I replied to you — up underneath your Magnificent 7 post.
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016InsideClimate News @insideclimate 7h7 hours ago
5 more earthquakes rattle parts of Oklahoma Friday http://wp.me/p4ySsy-15d9 via @KSNNews #fracking
reformfaanow
/ February 22, 2016Another version of USA ‘Madness, Madness!!’ … daily magnitude 4-5+ quakes, thank you frackers! Lawsuits being filed, to likely prove out how loyal our ‘injustice system’ is to money. http://www.dallasnews.com/business/energy/20160217-earthquake-lawsuit-targets-chesapeake-devon-new-dominion.
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016dtlange
/ February 21, 2016Ryan in New England
/ February 22, 2016My god, that is heartbreaking 😦
dtlange
/ February 21, 2016– Moss used to monitor air pollution.
( I wonder what they found re wood burning and car exhaust…) (Dry land algae blooms after precipitation events are what I see. But will/can it become moss — or same same? Lots of N NOX in wood burning and vehicle exhaust to act as nutrient.)
‘Portland pollution discovered almost as afterthought’
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The recent discovery of toxic pollution hotspots in Portland came almost as an afterthought.
Two U.S. Forest Service researchers who studied tree moss samples from around the city were primarily interested in testing for pollution from wood smoke and car exhaust, The Oregonian reported.
One of the researchers, Geoffrey Donovan, wasn’t keen on the idea of testing for carcinogenic heavy metals, but his colleague, Sarah Jovan, convinced him — in part because it was relatively cheap to do so, a bargain at $50 dollars per sample to test 25 metals…
http://tdn.com/news/state-and-regional/oregon/portland-pollution-discovered-almost-as-afterthought/article_9bece833-f72c-58b2-b5bd-39da0ead14db.html
umbrios27
/ February 22, 2016A recent study in the efectiveness of tropical forest protected areas surprised me. I expected that the efectiveness would vary wildly between countries as show, that richer countries would have better efectiveness and that deforestation near protected areas would affect deforestation inside protected areas, as show also. I also expected efectiveness of Brasil’s protected areas to be far worst than what the study showed, but it was in the “blues” still. That and the fact that Imazon has just announced that january’s Amazon forest deforestment alert’s are down 82% (economic crisis expected effects, but still good news) just made my day.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0143886
umbrios27
/ February 22, 2016Ironic silverlining in permafrost thawing: commerce in mamoth tusks may help save elephants: https://www.aeaweb.org/aea/2016conference/program/retrieve.php?pdfid=127
The good thing is that, unlike “historical” ivory, pieces made with mamoth ivory can be easily distinguished from elephant ivory, using only a light, a magnifing lens and knowledge. So commerce in legal and illegal ivory could be easily separed.
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016Keeling_Curve @Keeling_curve 1h1 hour ago
404.69 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in air 20-Feb-2016 http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016– Besides the current science etc. — it was the focus of action oriented environmental and social justice in a cooperative spirit (see RS masthead) that really drew me here to RS.
( And his team of ‘Cracker Jack’ contributors.)
( And his policing of ‘trolls’ etc. — not an easy task.)
– His wizardry of putting up timely, accurate, and comprehensive posts are something else.
DT
cc: Robert
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016– So far…
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016– Telling?
dnem
/ February 22, 2016And the chart doesn’t even include Patricia, which was perhaps the strongest cyclone ever on the planet, but weakened just before landfall.
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016– Good point, dnem.
All is happening and changing rapidly these day. Will need constant updating with each ‘record’ weather event…
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016– NE Pac. Two lows … w/seas over 40 ft w/each system.
todaysguestis
/ February 22, 2016Warmer seas linked to disease epidemics affecting Pacific starfish and Atlantic lobster
Warmer seas have been linked to disease epidemics affecting the populations of marine species in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
Starfish off the west coast of the US and Canada have endured high levels of a physically degenerative wasting disease which causes them to lose their limbs and die.
In addition, lobster off the coast of New England are experiencing increasing levels of shell disease.
New evidence, published by the Royal Society B, has linked both events to rising sea temperatures.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/warmer-seas-linked-to-disease-epidemics-affecting-pacific-starfish-and-atlantic-lobster-a6886936.html
Ryan in New England
/ February 22, 2016Climate change is behind the record breaking heat in Australia…
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2016/feb/22/fossil-fuel-emissions-behind-australias-record-breaking-spring-heat-suggests-study
Abel Adamski
/ February 22, 2016Courtesy of Peter Sinclair, the Danish record 1922-1939
http://gergs.net/2013/07/more-northern-sea-ice/
Abel Adamski
/ February 22, 2016The gif
Abel Adamski
/ February 22, 2016The Danes have records going back to the 1800’s
https://nsidc.org/data/docs/noaa/g02203-dmi/
Arctic Sea Ice Charts from Danish Meteorological Institute, 1893 – 1956
These charts, created by the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI), provide observed and inferred sea ice extent for each summer month from 1893 to 1956.
Peter Malsin
/ February 22, 2016Climate Reanalyzer today shows (air) temp anomaly @ .89° C above 1979-2000 baseline. I’ve not seen it above +.60° that I can recall.
June
/ February 22, 2016Yes, that was my thought about today’s Climate Reanalyzer (world) temp anomaly also…and the Arctic anomaly of +7.06 is mind-boggling.
http://cci-reanalyzer.org/DailySummary/#
Meanwhile the ESRL CO2 level for yesterday was 405.01
Ryan in New England
/ February 23, 2016Wow. That is a remarkable temp anomaly.
todaysguestis
/ February 22, 2016For Russian Farmers, Climate Change Is Nyet So Great
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/21/467413500/for-russian-farmers-climate-change-is-nyet-so-great?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016Keeling_Curve @Keeling_curve 28m28 minutes ago
405.94 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in air 21-Feb-2016
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016Cate
/ February 22, 2016Oh dear. Canadians weigh in on causes and solutions, and the results show how far we are from understanding what we are facing.
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/study-canadians-split-in-whether-humans-hurt-the-climate/64015/
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016dtlange
/ February 22, 2016dtlange
/ February 22, 2016– Impressive visual:
http://www.nnvl.noaa.gov/view/globaldata.html#TRUE
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016dtlange
/ February 22, 2016– Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
Study Reveals Stunning Acceleration of Sea Level Rise
climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ February 28, 2016Hmm, that graphic looks strangely like a … hockey stick.
dtlange
/ February 22, 2016http://www.climatecentral.org/news/study-reveals-acceleration-of-sea-level-rise-20055
todaysguestis
/ February 22, 2016Hey Ladies and Gents,
There’s some other important papers in that PNAS issue…
Antarctica could be more vulnerable to major melting than we thought
…the climate modeling study that was published at the same time as the study of the deep ocean drill core found that by adding several new processes and features to the simulation which speed up the rate of Antarctic ice collapse, it was possible to reproduce the presumed ice loss from Antarctica during the Miocene with only 500 parts per million or so of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Those factors include so-called “hydrofracture” — in which Antarctic ice shelves, which stabilize inland ice, shatter and fall apart as water pools on their surfaces, much as happened in recent memory with the Larsen A and Larsen B ice shelves — and “cliff collapse,” in which the sheer walls of ice that linger behind after hydrofracturing also crumble, due to the relative weakness of ice as a material.
We’re adding and including new physical processes in these models, and the result of that is we’ve begun to be able to simulate with these models the kinds of changes in the ice sheets that the geologists see,” says DeConto. He continued: “We were able to generate sea level going up and down again, on the order of tens of meters, like 30 meters, without having to go to extremely high levels of CO2.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/02/22/antarctica-could-be-more-vulnerable-to-major-melting-than-we-thought/
Abel Adamski
/ February 23, 2016Rather OT I know, but truly fascinating in the biological and geological sense
http://phys.org/news/2016-02-great-secrets-earth-evolution.html