On the present emissions pathway, it’s likely that the world will hit 4 degrees Celsius warming by 2100. And this level of warming will be enough to bring on heatwaves so hot that staying outside for even brief periods will be deadly. Such unimaginably severe heatwaves will affect heavily populated regions such as Eastern Europe, the U.S. East Coast, coastal China, India, and South America with biennial frequency.
(Probability that summer heat index values will exceed 40 C [104 F] and 55 C [131 F] under 1.5, 2 and 4 C warming. Note that biennial frequency of 55 C heat indexes over large regions under 4 C warming implies that strong heatwaves would be considerably more severe. Image source: Superheatwaves of 55 C Emerge if Global Warming Continues.)
These were the findings of a ground-breaking new report produced by Europe’s Joint Research Center. The report notes that many of these heatwaves will combine very hot air and high humidity to produce deadly conditions — implying wet bulb readings in the range of 35 degrees Celsius or the threshold for human survivability over densely populated regions. Such high levels of heat would be both crippling and life-threatening — bringing activity in these areas to a grinding halt, spiking cooling based energy demand, and making it impossible to stay in non climate controlled environments for more than very brief periods.
The report predicts that the rising global temperatures, due to fossil fuel burning, will bring about this new brand of super heatwave afflicting many of today’s most populated cities:
However, if temperatures rise to 4°C a severe scenario is on the horizon. Scientists predict that a new super-heatwave will appear with apparent temperature peaking at above 55°C– a level critical for human survival. It will affect densely populated areas such as USA’s East coast, coastal China, large parts of India and South America. Under this global warming scenario Europe is likely to suffer annual heatwaves with apparent temperature of above 40°C regularly while some regions of Eastern Europe may be hit by heatwaves of above 55°C.
55 degrees Celsius translates to 131 degrees Fahrenheit. Today’s Death Valley summer temperatures typically range between 115 and 120 F. By comparison, the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth, according to Christopher C. Burt from Weather Underground is presently 129.2 degrees Fahrenheit. But under continued fossil fuel regimes, apparent temperatures or heat indexes exceeding those very high values will occur with a very high regularity. That means it will feel like it’s hotter than Death Valley. Hotter than today’s highest ever recorded temperatures.
(Heatwaves like the one dubbed ‘Lucifer’ in Europe this year are just a mild foreshadowing of what’s to come if humans continue burning fossil fuels. Image source: Tropical Tidbits.)
Such heatwaves would regularly dwarf the impacts of today’s multi-billion dollar disasters like the heatwave dubbed Lucifer that impacted Europe this year. But the study authors note that even their worrying estimates may be conservative.
The report’s press release goes on to state that:
According to the study, the effect of relative humidity on heatwaves’ magnitude and peak might be underestimated in current research. The results of the study support the need for urgent mitigation and adaptation action to address the impacts of heatwaves, and indicate regions where new adaptation measures might be necessary to cope with heat stress.
Links:
Superheatwaves of 55 C Emerge if Global Warming Continues
eleggua
/ August 11, 2017‘Hottest Reliably Measured Air Temperatures on Earth – Part One’ by Chris Burt
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/hottest-reliably-measured-air-temperatures-on-earth.html
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eleggua
/ August 11, 2017‘Hottest Reliably Measured Air Temperatures on Earth – Part Two’ by Chris Burt
https://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/hottest-reliably-measured-air-temperatures-on-earth-part-two.html
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Andy_in_SD
/ August 11, 2017Oops!
How Much Drinking Water Has California Lost to Oil Industry Waste? No One Knows
https://ww2.kqed.org/science/2017/08/03/how-much-drinking-water-has-california-lost-to-oil-industry-waste-no-one-knows/
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Andy_in_SD
/ August 11, 2017Utopia?
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ August 13, 2017Yes. And next step is this:
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Baker
/ August 11, 2017Great and important article!
Which wet-bulb temperatures would the 40 °C and 55 °C heat index values translate to (as well as actual and dew-point temperatures, assuming typical humidity values)?
Having had at least three exceptional heat waves in Southern Europe only this summer, it must raise concern not only among people living there.
Particularly interesting is: What are yearly maximum temperatures that could be expected e.g. in Spain and Germany in cases of 2 °C and 4 °C warming (taking into account the non-linearity)? Are there any studies about it?
Some present values:
47 °C record of 2017 in Córdoba, 37 °C average high in July
40 °C record of 2003 in Freiburg, 27 °C average high in August
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robertscribbler
/ August 12, 2017With a temperature of 107 F, a dewpoint of 80 F, a relative humidity of 43 percent, with zero wind and no cloud cover, you end up with a heat index of 130 F and a wet bulb temperature of 96 F which is above 35 C. So yes, depending on conditions, a 131 F heat index could be higher than a 35 C wet bulb reading.
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Allan Barr
/ August 12, 2017There is an old saying in the financial industry, money talks and bullshit walks. Investors are not interested in bullshit, they want the facts before they invest. Looks like the money men are suggesting temps of 7.8 C by end of this century on our current path. They appear to be far ahead of mainstream climate scientists in their predictions. Just how valid do you believe this opinion to be Robert?
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/433yg9/global-investment-firm-warns-78-degrees-of-global-warming-is-possible
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robertscribbler
/ August 12, 20177.8 C is possible under BAU fossil fuel burning with a somewhat higher than expected climate sensitivity. 4 C is the likely present path which assumes that climate action at present levels continue. A stronger than expected response from the climate system would result in higher warming along the present pathway. And if the business group assumes less investment in alternatives than on the present path, a higher sensitivity, and/or more considerable feedbacks, then 7.8 C is in the ballpark. Note that more warming is more likely than less warming given noted higher paleoclimate sensitivity.
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Erik Frederiksen
/ August 13, 2017Then there’s the risk that the higher we let temperatures rise, the greater the risk of them going really high, and crossing thresholds for critical climate systems.
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robertscribbler
/ August 14, 2017I think that with 50-60 million years worth of carbon stores having been laid down through to the present glacial period that it’s more than fair to say that more warming brings more risk of strong harmful feedbacks.
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Spike
/ August 12, 2017I remember some of Joe Romm’s old posts from around 2008-9 where he quoted MIT and Hadley Centre studies saying 5C+ rises were possible under worst case scenarios so this has been flagged up by reputable scientific groups. Here’s one:
https://thinkprogress.org/hadley-center-catastrophic-5-7-c-warming-by-2100-on-current-emissions-path-cb2a1797a9dc/
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ August 13, 2017Scheduling tweet on this, thanks.
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Suzanne
/ August 12, 2017At the Guardian…”Iraq sends workers home as ‘ungodly’ heat grips Middle East”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/10/iraq-sends-workers-home-as-ungodly-heat-grips-middle-east
While Europe battles with a heatwave named Lucifer, the Middle East is enduring a summer so brutal that even those accustomed to Baghdad’s searing August weather are labelling it “ungodly”.
As temperatures rose towards 51C (124F) on Thursday, Iraq’s government declared a mandatory holiday, allowing civil servants to shelter at home.
So far this month in the Iraqi capital, every day but one has reached 48C or higher, and the forecast is for the high temperatures to continue for the next week.
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mlparrish
/ August 12, 2017Massive El Niño sent greenhouse-gas emissions soaring. Disruptive weather pattern in 2014–2016 spurred tropical forests to pump out 3 billion tonnes of carbon. 10 August 2017
“The monster El Niño weather pattern of 2014–16 caused tropical forests to burp up 3 billion tonnes of carbon, according to a new analysis. That’s equivalent to nearly 20% of the emissions produced during the same period by burning fossil fuels and making cement.
Measurements taken by NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) satellite, which measures the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, suggest that El Niño boosted emissions in three ways. A combination of high temperatures and drought increased the number and severity of wildfires in southeast Asia, while drought stunted plant growth in the Amazon rainforest, reducing the amount of carbon it absorbed. And in Africa, a combination of warming temperatures and near-normal rainfall increased the rate at which forests exhaled CO2.
The overall jump in emissions from tropical forests was roughly three times the annual average carbon output from deforestation and land-use change globally between 2006 and 20151.
The analysis, presented on 7 August at a meeting of the Ecological Society of America in Portland, Oregon, is a coup for OCO-2. Since 2014, the satellite has given scientists their best view yet of how human activities and natural systems affect the ebb and flow of CO2 emissions. . . ”
http://www.nature.com/news/massive-el-ni%C3%B1o-sent-greenhouse-gas-emissions-soaring-1.22440
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robertscribbler
/ August 12, 2017And.. Bingo. Fantastic job OCO-2. This was the general supposition from jump — that El Nino produced a stronger carbon feedback response from the Earth System. Nice to see that confirmed. Will be writing about this one. Thank you ML.
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Spike
/ August 12, 2017There was that other paper this week which postulated that droughts may occur so frequently that plants may not have time to recover. I thought of Amazonia then with 3 bad droughts in a decade, and remember reading this week that the 2015-16 one was the worst.
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Spike
/ August 12, 2017This article states: “The team found that not only was 2015 likely the hottest year for the Amazon since 1900 —1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than during the 1997-98 El Niño — but also that the area of the Amazon experiencing extreme drought was about 20 percent larger than ever seen before.”
https://news.mongabay.com/2017/01/record-heat-and-drought-seen-in-amazon-during-2015-16-el-nino/
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Bill H
/ August 12, 2017Wow, it’s all very well CO2 being “plant food”, as a number of people never tire of reciting. But it’s not much use if (a) the plants don’t have the water to let them photosynthesise, (b) the plants are being burnt to a crisp.
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wili
/ August 12, 2017The year Trump was elected was so hot, it was one-in-a-million
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/aug/11/the-year-trump-was-elected-was-so-hot-it-was-1-in-a-million
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bostonblorp
/ August 12, 2017British Virgin Islands receives 17 inches (43cm) of rain in 17 hours.
http://viconsortium.com/featured/bvi-experienced-an-unprecedented-17-inches-of-rain-during-recent-storm-outside-help-pours-in/
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Spike
/ August 13, 2017Another unprecedented rain event – coming thick and fast.
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ August 13, 2017Scheduling tweet on this, thanks.
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Carole
/ August 12, 2017T reading in Ahvaz on June 29, 2017:
– hi of 54C with 17% humidity at that point in time.
In nearby Nasiriya, Iraq the next day (June 30, 2017):
– 57C (134F) with 11% humidity at that point in time.
At the time of this post, Nasiriya is a steamy 50C (122F)
Iraq has been under a heat dome for weeks/months.
https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/iraq/nasiriya/historic?month=6&year=2017
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Suzanne
/ August 12, 2017Rich Tundra Vegetation Fuels Wildfire near Greenland Ice Sheet..
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Bill H
/ August 12, 2017Great summary, Robert, bringing together the threads. A pedantic point: I think it should be biennial (every 2 years), not bi-annual (twice a year) for the predicted 55 deg heat waves.
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@whut
/ August 13, 2017Right but not pedantic, as it may be a key:
The key to understanding the behavior of ENSO is the same biennial modulation of the lunar forcing.
http://contextearth.com/2017/06/08/strictly-biennial-cycles-in-enso/
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robertscribbler
/ August 14, 2017Let’s be careful with this one, WHT. The science on this, so far, is very thin.
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robertscribbler
/ August 14, 2017Typo fix in.
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Bill H
/ August 12, 2017Off-topic, but my heart goes out to the Charlottesville victims. Crazed white US nationalist emulating crazed Jihadis. Crazed Orange one then blames “many sides” before telling us how wonderful he’s made everything.
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Greg
/ August 13, 2017Bill, as a lifelong resident of Charlotteville I am grateful to live in a safe home a couple of miles from downtown and the university but we kept inside today, with the kids, expecting no good could come from participating in counterprotests, and every normal event was cancelled anyway. Tomorrow, I will go down to Water street for the expected unofficial memorial and lay some flowers for the woman who died from that maniac in a dodge charger who came from another state and drove over 20 people. We are really really pissed off. It will make our community stronger, however. It is otherwise one of the prettiest places on Earth. Only 40,000 full-time residents and peaceful. If it can happen here it can happen anywhere in any place that has national borders containing an extreme right ideology. 350 million citizens and a few hundred stole the headlines today and fraudulently projected their power. Charlottesville is in that chart above for unlivable temperatures before the century is out so that is where I must return my mind as soon as I am able.
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bill h
/ August 13, 2017Thanks for the update, Greg. Let’s hope that bunch of paramilitaries and self-appointed “vigilantes” stay well away from your fine city.
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Greg
/ August 13, 2017Thanks. Bill. This is the young lady a white nationalist killed yesterday with his car. The irony of a white nationalist killing Heather, a young white woman, reminds me what we stand for against fear and, in the case of climate denialists, also greed which eventually destroys them and the rest of us.
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robertscribbler
/ August 14, 2017Not off topic at all, in my view. It seems to me that racism and climate change denial spring from the same root — fear of difference, fear of others, fear of knowledge, fear of change, a false and corrupt sense of god-given entitlement, and an exploitative view of the Earth, her bounty, and the various creatures and human beings who’ve made her their home.
Have had strong words for Trump and others on this:
To be fair, Jennifer Rubin, a conservative, has called for all Confederate monuments to be taken down.
And I think that Obama’s response was exactly the kind of response the nation needed to hear from a leader:
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Greg
/ August 14, 2017Thank you Robert. Thank you.
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Exposing the Big Game
/ August 12, 2017Reblogged this on The Extinction Chronicles.
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redskylite
/ August 13, 2017Recently there have been authoritative reports on future dangers caused by climate change in North America, Asia, Australia, Europe and New Zealand. This year which is definitely ENSO Neutral and just another very ordinary year in the climate cycle, we have seen a few dangerous heatwaves, a precursor of what may be in store.
Today news of nearly 100 new volcanoes discovered under West Antarctica, and a warning of volatility due to melting ice sheets.
“one alarming trend: “The most volcanism that is going in the world at present is in regions that have only recently lost their glacier covering – after the end of the last ice age. These places include Iceland and Alaska.
“Theory suggests that this is occurring because, without ice sheets on top of them, there is a release of pressure on the regions’ volcanoes and they become more active.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/12/scientists-discover-91-volcanos-antarctica
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redskylite
/ August 13, 2017a 4 minute audio version for tired eyes.
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Mblanc
/ August 15, 2017It’s all gone a bit Bill McGuire again!
http://www.billmcguire.co.uk/
We can’t say we weren’t told. The inter-relationship between earthquakes, vulcanism, tsunami’s and melting ice-sheets are important issues going forward.
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bill h
/ August 13, 2017Redsky, good catch. The “isostatic rebound” of land masses underlying melting ice sheets is a well established phenomenon. Failure to acknowledge it in the past led to under-estimates of the rate of melt of ice sheets. See for instance https://skepticalscience.com/Greenland-rising-faster-as-ice-loss-accelerates.html. What happens is that the loss of pressure from the overlying ice causes magma to flow into the rock below the ice forcing the rock upwards. Increased volcanic activity would then be expected.
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Bob
/ August 13, 2017Thus two more feedback mechanisms that are not in model predictions for future temperature predictions; antarctic vulcanism and increased el Nino frequency caused Amazonian burps of CO2.
I often send friends copies of articles that illustrate the trend for many CC predictions to increase with time. I title these emails .”Faster and Faster” There will be many surprises as the giants awaken. I will now need to send emails titled “New Feedbacks Discovered”.
The only true constants are mankind’s ignorance and hubris.
No better place to learn about the breadth of science related to CC than this blog and its comments. Thanks all.
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climatehawk1
/ August 13, 2017Tweet scheduled.
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Vic
/ August 14, 2017I think there’s something in the water in the state of South Australia. Not content with a grid running at nearly 50% renewables, not content with one of the highest penetrations of rooftop solar in the world, not content with the world’s largest Li-ion battery installation, they’ve now announced they’re going ahead with the world’s largest solar thermal power tower installation rated at 150MW with eight hours of molten salt storage to supply around 5% of the state’s electricity needs. 😀
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-14/solar-thermal-power-plant-announcement-for-port-augusta/8804628
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Vic
/ August 14, 2017LikeLike
Vic
/ August 14, 2017LikeLike
robertscribbler
/ August 14, 2017+1
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Titania Baildon
/ August 14, 2017If renewables are ‘in the water’, then can we get a sample of that water and put it in all of the reservoirs in the U.S.? Especially the ones in D.C. and the capital cities of every state?
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robertscribbler
/ August 14, 2017+1
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Leland Palmer
/ August 14, 2017An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress, 2010, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Sherwood et al.
“Despite the uncertainty in future climate-change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation. Peak heat stress, quantified by the wetbulb temperature TW , is surprisingly similar across diverse climates today. TW never exceeds 31 °C. Any exceedence of 35 °C for extended periods should induce hyperthermia in humans and other mammals, as dissipation of metabolic heat becomes impossible. While this never happens now, it would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about 7 °C, calling the habitability of some regions into question. With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed. Eventual warmings of 12 °C are possible from fossil fuel burning. One implication is that recent estimates of the costs of unmitigated climate change are too low unless the range of possible warming can somehow be narrowed. Heat stress also may help explain trends in the mammalian fossil record.”
So, the white areas in figure F have wet bulb temperatures exceeding 35C, I think for extended periods of time.
Fig. 1. (A) Histograms of 2-meter T (Black), Tmax (Blue), and TWðmaxÞ (Red) on land from 60S–60N during the last decade (1999–2008). “Max” histograms are annual maxim accumulated over location and year, while the T histogram is accumulated over location and reanalysis time. Data are from the ERA-Interim reanalysis 4xdaily product (similar results are found for the 50m level from the NCEP reanalysis, see SI Text). (B) Map of TWðmaxÞ. (and D) Same as A and B but from a slab-ocean version of the CAM3 climate model that produces global-mean surface temperature close to modern values. (E and F) Same as C and D but from a high-CO2 model run that produces a global-mean T 12 °C warmer; accounting for GCM bias, the TWðmaxÞ distributions are roughly what would be expected with 10 °C of global-mean warming relative to the last decade (see text). Dashed line in E is TWðmaxÞ reproduced from C. White land areas in F exceed 35 °C.
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Leland Palmer
/ August 14, 2017So, here’s the link:
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/21/9552.full.pdf?with-ds=yes
The E histogram from their Figure 1 and the F map from Figure 1 are from a high CO2 model run that they claim could occur if we burn all the fossil fuels.
No mention of methane.
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Ronald
/ August 15, 2017I read the very interesting but alarming report. What I find particularly worrisome are two regions on the climate map of the worst case scenario, that will suffer the worst heat stress:
– The dense populated region of monsoonal southern Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh). How will so many people survive there?
– The eastern, southern, central and southwestern Amazon. How will the rainforest cope with those high temperatures? Will a critical threshold be passed in forest die-back and bulging of CO2?
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robertscribbler
/ August 15, 2017There are stresses to the Rainforests now. There’s a high risk that these forests can’t handle 2-4 levels of warming. The threshold is probably in that range. But combined human deforestation + 1.5 C heat is probably enough to take down many of these critical forests. We need to be very vigilant — both with land management and with rapid carbon emissions reductions if we’re to save these forests. In other words, we need to quicken the pace for both forest preservation and rates of renewable energy adoption.
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Leland Palmer
/ August 20, 2017Hi Ronald-
If it gets bad enough that widespread areas are uninhabitable because of heat stress, likely another factor not in the paper will come into play – the release of methane from permafrost and methane hydrates.
What has been the main concern in my mind is the possibility that a methane catastrophe would be triggered by CO2 based global warming. This could set off a series of oceanic and atmospheric chemistry changes that could amplify the warming still further, according to serious scientists like Peter Ward, Gordon Dickens and Ivar S. A Isaksen.
If these heat stress uninhabitable areas start to appear with 7 degrees C of warming, how much of the globe would be uninhabitable if we get 10-12 degrees C of warming?
What we have to do is stop it now, while we still can, I think.
I think we can still stop it, although the recent news about record heat in the absence of an El Nino makes me wonder. I believe myself we ought to go directly to BECCS (Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage) plus massive conversion to renewable energy sources, and see how much momentum we can take out of the system, now, while we still can.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage
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Leland Palmer
/ August 14, 2017I think that cities like Baghdad could construct mass shelters that might get them through the next couple of decades. One way to chill the shelters might be to store cold water in an aquifer, collected at night in the winter with some heat pump assist to chill it close to freezing.
When these high heat and humidity events occur, people could gather in the shelters. The shelters could be equipped with some way to dehumidify the shelter, perhaps with a desiccant regenerated with solar energy.
Unfortunately, gathering so many heat and moisture producing people together might not be a good idea, if the power fails.
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Leland Palmer
/ August 16, 2017Hmmm…gravity fed cold water from insulated water towers or tanks might meet the reliability requirements of such a shelter. Better yet, maybe three such water towers per shelter, each with an independent system of radiators to make sure that even if two towers were damaged by surface riots, the third would still be functional. What they wouldn’t want is thousands of people dying in the shelter, or forced outside to die of heat stress outside the shelter.
Bulk chemical desiccants might meet the reliability requirements for humidity control. These desiccants could be regenerated with solar energy, with a natural gas backup. But with a large enough supply of, for example, silica gel, possibly weeks of shelter time could be assured before regeneration was necessary.
Ideally, what we would want is passive safety for the shelters, so that laws of physics would have to be broken to make the shelter a death trap for thousands of people.
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Suzanne
/ August 14, 2017At the WP this morning…”Evidence of Climate Change abounds amid extreme weather in the Pacific NW”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/08/14/daily-202-evidence-of-climate-change-abounds-amid-extreme-weather-in-the-pacific-northwest/59910b8e30fb0462b8e1a9c4/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_daily202-climate-817am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
SEATTLE — This city known for its rain just went a record-breaking 55 days without any.
The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport had not measured any precipitation since June 18 until the wee hours of Sunday morning, when it drizzled. Barely. Some sprinkles also allowed Portland to break its own 57-day dry streak.
Climate change is leading to more extreme weather, and no other region has experienced that so much over the last year as the Pacific Northwest. Seattle got 44.9 inches of rain between Oct. 1 and April 30, the wettest such period ever. That means, even with the record dry streak, 2017 remains above normal for rainfall.
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climatehawk1 (@climatehawk1)
/ August 14, 2017Scheduling tweet on this, thanks.
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Suzanne
/ August 14, 2017Sunday I attended a viewing of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Sequel” sponsored by an environmental resistance group in my area that had been planned for weeks. I hope everyone will take the time to see the documentary. The sad part..(even more sad than the documentary)…was all of us left the viewing to head over to a “vigil” for Heather Heyer and the other victims of White Supremacist, Neo Nazi terrorism.
Everyday I get up and fight the good fight against the Trump Regime who are destroying our environment…our Institutions. and our Constitution. But I have to say…the sadness I am feeling over the events in Charlottesville has me feeling overwhelmed with grief.
What the hell has happened to our country?
I am in my 60’s and never thought that in 2017, I would see a resurgence of the KKK, White Nationalism and their ilk …and I never, ever believed we would have a POTUS who is incapable of calling them out by name, and who has hired White Nationalists to serve him in “our” White House.
Sorry guys for going off topic..but my anger, sadness, and despair has reached a new low level. I just don’t know how much more of this destruction I, or any of us, will be able to take.
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robertscribbler
/ August 14, 2017You are right to feel grief. We should all be feeling it at this time. But the only cure for the darkness now rising against us is action. The call for good women and men to do something could not be clearer.
Heather Heyer died doing the right thing. She died setting an example by making a brave stand against hate. She had the guts to do the right thing and paid the ultimate price. The best thing we could do to honor her spirit is to take up the banner that was so violently wrenched from her fingers.
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Suzanne
/ August 14, 2017Thanks Robert. You are right, of course, we cannot let the despair immobilize us…otherwise we dishonor Heather..a true American hero.
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robertscribbler
/ August 14, 2017Love to you, her, her family. And all of those who put themselves on the line for the rest of us. You are all American heroes.
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Leland Palmer
/ August 15, 2017Hi Suzanne-
I believe myself that the global warming denial Astroturf propaganda effort that the fossil fuel corporations ran is fueling this sort of violence.
Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air
How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco’s Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science (2007)
http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/legacy/assets/documents/global_warming/exxon_report.pdf
The same sort of widespread flight from reality that was seen in Nazi Germany is seen today among the Alt Right, I think. I hope that the Koch Brothers got what they wanted, with Trump as the result of their propaganda efforts.
Wait until the Alt Right becomes as afraid of global warming as they should be. We’ll have millions of angry white men and women in denial becoming even more enraged as they realize that they were wrong about global warming, were wrong repeatedly, and were wrong for years and years.
We’ll be lucky if all of this anger and denial doesn’t lead to wars, I think.
Everyone ought to work in laboratories once in their life, to see how easy it is to be wrong, how human we all are, and how when in error the best thing to do is just admit it.
Sorry not to be more comfort. What I take comfort in is the declining cost of solar energy and the huge demand for electric cars.
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