Arctic News: December 2020

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

An Orwellian climate while Rome burns

by Andrew Glikson

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. - Albert Einstein.

As the world is trying to hopefully recover from the tragic effects of COVID-19, it is reminded there is no vaccine for the existential threat for its life support systems posed by global warming, nor for the looming threats of future wars and nuclear wars fueled by warmongers and $trillion preparations by military-industrial complexes.

Between 1740 and 1897 some 230 wars and revolutions in Europe suggested war remained deeply ingrained in the human psyche and civilization. The question is whether the currently approaching catastrophes can be averted.

No one wishes to believe in the projections made in the recent book ‘The Uninhabitable Earth’, except that these projections, made by David Wallace-Wells, are disturbingly consistent with the current shift in state of the climate toward +4 degrees and even +6 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, as indicated by the current trends (Figure 1) and conveyed by leading climate scientists and the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC).

Figure 1.. Global mean temperature estimates for land areas (NASA).

Facing the unthinkable consequences of global warming is pushing climate scientists into a quandary. In private conversations, many scientists express far greater concern at the trend of global warming than they do in public. However, faced with social and psychological barriers, as well as threats of losing positions and jobs, in business, public service and academia, a majority keeps silent, displaying lesser courage than school children.

According to James Hansen (2012), NASA’s former chief climate scientist: “You can’t burn all of these fossil fuels without creating a different planet”. According to Joachim Schellnhuber (2015), Germany’s chief climate scientist: ‘We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet’, and ‘If we don’t solve the climate crisis, we can forget about the rest’.

Referring to a phenomenon he termed “scientific reticence”, James Hansen (2007) states: “I suggest that a “scientific reticence” (namely a reluctance to convey worrying news) is inhibiting the communication of a threat of a potentially large sea level rise”.

According to Bajaj (2019): “when it comes to climate change, the need for excessive caution and absolute certainty of the results is manifesting as silence from the mainstream science on the worst yet probable consequences and the worst-case scenarios that are looking increasingly likely”. A paradox emerges where scientists who experience scientific reticence are still accused of being alarmists.

This is because an evaluation of the probability of a risk needs to be related to the magnitude of the risk. For example, the inspection of the engines of a Jumbo Jet carrying 300 passengers need to be even more rigorous than that of a commuter van, or evaluation of the risk posed by a potential failure of a nuclear reactor even more critical than that of a conventional power plant, as is the absolute safety of a particle accelerator.

By analogy with the dictum “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” projections of future climate trajectories need to take account of studies of the past behaviour of the atmosphere-ocean system. The pace of current global warming exceeds those of the last 2.6 million years by an order of magnitude, with calamitous consequences for biological systems.

As indicated by the basic laws of physics, the principles of climate science and empirical observations in nature, under an increase of greenhouse gas concentrations by about 50 percent , global warming is inevitable. While modeled future climate change trajectories may vary, depending whether observations are based on recent measurements, paleoclimate data or models, the consequences of such an increase are inevitably catastrophic. Whereas IPCC models portray linear warming trends to 2300, other models take account of the flow of ice melt water from Greenland and Antarctica into the oceans and thereby irregular warming (Glikson, 2019).

Given the warnings issued by leading climate scientists and the IPCC, while nations keep investing their dwindling $trillions in its military-industrial complexes in preparations for future war/s, our world is losing its last chance to save its planetary life support systems.

Andrew Glikson

Dr Andrew Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist
ANU Climate Science Institute
ANU Planetary Science Institute
Canberra, Australia

Books:
The Asteroid Impact Connection of Planetary Evolution
http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400763272
The Archaean: Geological and Geochemical Windows into the Early Earth
http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319079073
Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene
http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319225111
The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth
http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319572369
Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropocene Climate Event Horizon
http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400773318
From Stars to Brains: Milestones in the Planetary Evolution of Life and Intelligence
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783030106027
Asteroids Impacts, Crustal Evolution and Related Mineral Systems with Special Reference to Australia
http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319745442

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Temperatures keep rising

Temperatures keep rising. Above image uses NASA data that are adjusted to reflect a 1750 baseline, ocean air temperatures and higher polar anomalies, while showing anomalies going back to September 2011, adding a blue trend going back to 1880 and a red trend going back to September 2011.

The map below also shows that in November 2020, especially the Arctic Ocean, again was very hot.

Anomalies in the above NASA image are compared to 1951-1980, while NOAA's default baseline for temperature anomalies is the 20th century average. In the Copernicus image below anomalies are compared to the 1981-2010 average.

Using a different baseline can make a lot of difference. An earlier analysis pointed out that, when using a 1750 baseline and when using ocean air temperatures and higher Arctic anomalies, we did already cross 2°C above pre-industrial in February 2020.

Above Copernicus image shows temperatures averaged over the twelve-month period from December 2019 to November 2020. The image shows that the shape of the global anomaly over the past twelve months is very similar to the peak reached around 2016. This confirms that global heating is accelerating, because the peak around 2016 was reached under strong El Niño conditions, whereas current temperatures are reached under La Niña conditions. Furthermore, sunspots are currently low. The La Niña and the low sunspots are both suppressing temperatures, as discussed in a recent post.

Future rise?

By how much will temperatures rise over the next few years?

Above image, from the U.N. Emissions Gap Report 2020, shows that growth in greenhouse gas emissions continued in 2019, with emissions reaching a total of 59.1 GtCO₂e. The commitments promised at the Paris Agreement in 2015 were not enough to limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C and those commentments were not even met, said António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General, calling on all nations to declare a state of Climate Emergency until carbon neutrality is reached. Earlier, António Guterres had said: "We are headed for a thundering temperature rise of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius this century."

What could cause a steep temperature rise over the next few years?

A temperature rise of more than 3°C above pre-industrial could occur, and this could actually happen within a few years time. There are a number of reasons why the temperature rise could take place so fast, as described below.

As said, the temperature is currently suppressed by the current La Niña and the currently low sunspots (Hansen et al. give the sunpot cycle an amplitude of some 0.25 W/m²). Such short-term differences show up more in the red trend of the image at the top, which uses a polynomial trend over a short period.

Compensating for the fact that sunspots are currently low and the fact that we're currently a La Niña period can already push the temperature anomaly well over the 2°C threshold that politicians at the Paris Agreement pledged would not be crossed.

The above NOAA image and the NOAA image below illustrate that we are currently experiencing La Niña conditions.

How long will it take before we'll reach the peak of the next El Niño? NOAA says:

El Niño and La Niña episodes typically last nine to 12 months, but some prolonged events may last for years. While their frequency can be quite irregular, El Niño and La Niña events occur on average every two to seven years. Typically, El Niño occurs more frequently than La Niña.

There are further reasons why the temperature rise could strongly accelerate over the next few years. Loss of cooling aerosols is one such reason. Another reason is the growing frequency and intensity of forest fires, which come with high emissions of methane, of heating aerosols such as black carbon and brown carbon, and of carbon monoxide that causes hydroxyl depletion, thus extending the lifetime of methane and heating aeosols.

Map from earlier post. The vertical axis depicts
latitude, the North Pole is at the top (90° North),
the Equator in the middle (0°) and the South Pole

at the bottom (-90° South). GHCN v4 land-surface

air + ERSST v5 sea-surface water temperature

anomaly. The Arctic anomaly reaches 4.83°C or
8.69°F vs 1951-1980, and 5.57°C vs 1885-1914.

A hotter world will will also hold more water vapor, a potent greenhouse gas.

Furthermore, many tipping points affect the Arctic, e.g. more methane and nitrous oxide emissions can be expected to result from continued decline of what once was permafrost.

The temperature rise is felt the strongest in the Arctic, as illustrated by the zonal mean temperature anomaly map on the right, from an earlier post.

As one of the tipping points gets crossed in the Arctic, multiple feedbacks can start kicking in more strongly, resulting in multiple additional tipping points to subsequently get crossed.

At least ten tipping points affect the Arctic, as described in an earlier post, and it looks like the latent heat tipping point has already been crossed, as illustrated by the image below, from an earlier post, which shows two such tipping points.

[ from an earlier post ]

Huge temperature rise

When extending the vertical axis of the image at the top, a picture emerges that shows that a temperature rise of more than 13°C above 1750 could happen by 2026. The trend shows that 10°C is crossed in February 2026, while an additional rise of 3°C takes place in the course of 2026. The temperature could rise this much, in part because at 1200 ppm CO₂e the cloud feedback will start to kick in, which in itself can raise temperatures by an additional 8°C.

And the rise wouldn't stop there! Even when adding up the impact of only the existing carbon dioxide and methane levels, and then adding large releases of seafloor methane, this alone could suffice to trigger the cloud feedback, as described in an earlier post.

Of course, there are further warming elements, in addition to carbon dioxide and methane, and they could jointly cause a rise of 10°C by 2026 even in case of smaller releases of seafloor methane, as illustrated by the image below.

[ from an earlier post ]

Above image illustrates how a temperature rise of more than as 10°C could eventuate as early as February 2026 when taking into account aerosol changes, albedo changes, water vapor, nitrous oxide, etc., as discussed in an earlier analysis.

The joint impact of all warming elements, including the cloud feedback, threatens to cause a total rise of 18°C, as an earlier post warned, adding the image on the right.

How high could the temperature rise? At a 3°C rise, humans will likely go extinct, while most life on Earth will disappear with a 5°C rise, and as the temperature keeps rising, oceans will evaporate and Earth will go the same way as Venus, a 2019 analysis warned.

The situation is dire and calls for immediate, comprehensive and effective action, as described in the Climate Plan.

Links

• Climate Plan
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climateplan.html

• NOAA Global Climate Report - November 2020
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202011

• NASA GISS Surface Temperature Analysis - maps
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/index.html

• What are El Niño and La Niña?
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html

• Multivariate El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) Index Version 2 (MEI.v2)
https://psl.noaa.gov/enso/mei

• Copernicus - surface air temperature for Novmber 2020
https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-october-2020

• NOAA ISIS Solar Cycle Sunspot Number Progression
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression

• Secretary-General's address at Columbia University: "The State of the Planet"
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2020-12-02/address-columbia-university-the-state-of-the-planet

• U.N. Emissions Gap Report 2020

Sunday, December 13, 2020

The myth of “net zero emissions by 2050”

by Andrew Glikson

[ Oil and gas fracking pads in Texas. Photo: Dennis Dimick ]

It should raise people’s hopes to believe “net zero emissions by 2050” will arrest or at least slow-down global warming, had it not been yet another cruel hoax perpetrated in the wake of more than 50 years of obfuscation and denial of environment and climate science.

This is because:

The proposed zero emission by 2050 overlooks the long term nature of ongoing investments, mining and drilling for carbohydrates, such as new oil fields as in the North Atlantic and the sub-Arctic, new coal fields such as in the Galilee Basin, or fracking for coal seam gas in North America and Australia. According to Columbia University, “The gas industry and investors have plans to build over $70 billion of new gas-fired power plants through 2025, according to two Rocky Mountain Institute reports”.

Thus it is reported “the State Bank of India might lend $1 billion to Bravus, the absurdly renamed Adani Mining, to finance its Carmichael coal and rail project in the Galilee Basin”. Likewise “At the end of last year Australia overtook Qatar to become the world’s largest exporter of LNG, and now even more companies are investing in infrastructure throughout the region to turn Western Australia into a global LNG hub.”
The proposed reductions in emissions are to be mainly confined to domestic emissions, neglecting carbon exports that end up mixing in the atmosphere and oceans, returning to harm life on Earth. Australia, China and the US are the largest CO2 emitters and Saudi Arabia, Russia and Australia are the largest CO2 exporters. On a per capita basis, Australia’s carbon footprint, including exports, is nine times higher than China’s, four times that of the US, and 37 times that of India.

National emissions inventories exclude the large CO2 transfers associated with international trade, such as has grown dramatically since the early 1990s. This hampered overall progress to cut total CO2 emissions over the past few decades. When CO2 imports are considered, the reduction in emissions achieved by many developed countries is much smaller than would otherwise appear.

Australia mines about 57 tonnes of CO2 potential per person each year, about 10 times the global average, and is the world's third-biggest exporter of hydrocarbons behind Russia and Saudi Arabia. In total Australia emits about five per cent of global total CO2 once exports are included. A Fact Check estimated that Australia's domestic emissions plus the emissions embedded in its exports added to 1,712 million tonnes in 2016. The total falls from 3.6 per cent to 3.3 per cent of global emissions.
The proposed reductions take no account of the accelerated rise of temperatures due to the radiative effects of the rising greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, which by 2050 will be tracking toward 600 parts per million CO2-equivalent of combined carbon and nitrous oxide gases. These are already generating amplifying feedbacks from land and ocean which drive temperatures higher, rendering reductions of emissions ineffective. At that stage the large ice sheets would experience irreversible melting.

For this reason, the essential reductions in emission must be accompanied with sequestration of atmospheric greenhouse gases by at least the amount of annual emissions.

The authorities are not listening to what climate science is indicating. Instead they are consulting with economists ignorant of the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere and of the consequences of global heating. An example is the absurd idea as if “a rise of 4°C in global average temperature would be “optimal” when the costs and benefits of mitigating climate change are balanced”.

Currently, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere are increasing at the approximate rate of 2 to 3 parts per million per year. This leaves the fundamental question unanswered: What, if anything, would halt the fatal progression toward +4 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures, given that according to the IPCC (cited by the World Bank) a “four degree world would be one of unprecedented heatwaves, severe drought and major floods in many regions”. In perspective, global warming of the 20-21st centuries is at least 70 times faster than the rise of about 5 degrees Celsius over a period of about 7000 years since the last interglacial period. At this rate of environmental change mass extinctions are inevitable. When Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber (former climate adviser to the German Chancellor and the EU) was asked about the difference between a +2°C and a +4°C world, he replied: “Human civilization”.

Andrew Glikson

Friday, December 4, 2020

Polar-ward climate zones shift and consequent tipping points

by Andrew Glikson

The concept of a global climate tipping point/s implies a confluence of climate change processes in several parts of the world where regional climate changes can combine as a runaway shifts to a new climate state. Conversely the shift of climate zones can constitute the underlying factor that triggers extreme weather events which culminate in tipping points. These shifts include the expansion of the tropics, tropical cyclones, mid-latitude storms and weakening of boundaries of the polar vortex, allowing breach of air masses of contrasting temperatures through the jet stream polar boundary, with ensuing snow storms and heatwaves.

Figure 1. Climate tipping points (McSweeney 2020)

The migration of climate zones toward the poles appears to constitute a major factor in triggering tipping points in the Earth system (Figures 1 and 2), including (from north to south):

permafrost loss
expansion of the Boreal forest at the expense of the tundra
disintegration of the Greenland ice sheet
breakdown of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) caused by an increased influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic
Amazon forest dieback
West African monsoon shift
Indian monsoon shift
Coral reef die-off
West Antarctic ice disintegration

Not included in this list are the increased desertification and the extensive fires in parts of the continents, including the Arctic, Siberia, western North America, the Mediterranean, Brazil and Australia.

Figure 2. Monthly anomalies for October 2020 by NOAA (National Centers for Environmental Information)

A conflation of regional climate developments into global climate tipping point/s, namely a shift in state of the Earth climate is likely, although the details of this process are not clear. Alternatively it is the migration of climate zones toward the poles, indicated by climate zone maps, which is triggering regional events.

Figure 3. High anomalies over the Arctic from Nov. 2019 to Oct. 2020 (NASA image)

Here I list some of these likely relationships:

In the Arctic sea ice extent in October 2020 was lower by 36.8% than during 1981-2010 (Figure 2). High anomalies have hit the Artic Ocean and Siberia over the 12-month period from November 2019 to October 2020 (Figure 3). The warming of the Arctic is driven by (1) a decline in albedo due to ice melt and exposure of open water surfaces; (2) the albedo flip generated by formation of thin water surfaces above ice sheets and glaciers, and (3) the penetration of warm air masses through the weakened circum-Arctic jet stream (Figure 4.).
The tropics are expanding at a rate of near-50 km per decade (Jones 2018) and have widened about 0.5° latitude per decade since 1979 (Staten et al. 2018). With warming and desertification effects across North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea this is leading to draughts and fires in southern Europe. The shift of climate zones toward the poles, at a rate approximately 50 to 100 km per decade, as well as sea level rise, is changing the geography of the planet. Once sea level reaches equilibrium temperatures it will attain at least 25 meters above the present, by analogy to Pliocene level (before 2.6 million years ago).
As climate zones shift northward an increase of winter precipitation of up to 35% is recorded in mid to northern Europe during the 21st century, with increases of up to 30% in north-eastern Europe. In 2020 Europe had the warmest October on record and North America the heaviest snow precipitation on record (Figure 2).
In Australia a southward migration of the tropical North Australia climate zone and the high pressure ridge separating it from the southern terrain dominated by the Westerlies and the precipitation-bearing spirals of the Antarctic-sourced vortex southward, with consequent droughts in southern and southwestern parts of the continent.

Figure 4. The Arctic jet stream, summer, 1988, NASA. Extreme melting in
Greenland’s ice sheet is linked to warm air delivered by the wandering jet
stream, a fast-moving belt of westerly winds created by the convergence of
cold air masses descending from the Arctic and rising warm air masses from
the tropics that flow through the lower layers of the atmosphere.

As evident from the above the shift in climate zones constitutes the underlying factor which triggers extreme weather events and tipping points.

Figure 5. Arctic surface-air temperature anomalies for July 2020.

Since the onset of the industrial age, in particular since about 1960-70, global warming accelerated at by one to two orders of magnitude faster than during the last glacial termination (~16000 – 8000 years ago) and much earlier. Mass extinction events in the Earth history have occurred when environmental changes took place at a rate to which species could not adapt. Plants and animals are currently dying off at a rate 100 to 1000 times faster than the mean rate of extinction over geological timescales.

The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC AR5) projects linear warming to 2300 and 2500, which however does not take full account of amplifying feedbacks from a range of sources (Trajectories of the Earth system in the Anthropocene). These include reduced CO2 sequestration in the warming oceans, albedo changes due to melting of ice, enrichment of the atmosphere in water vapor, desiccation and burning vegetation, release of methane from permafrost. Nor do these linear trends take account of the stadial effects of the flow of cold ice melt water into the oceans (Glikson, 2019).

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) global warming has accelerated significantly during 2015-2020. The danger inherent in temperature rise to about 4 degrees Celsius by 2100 is underpinned by the consequences at lower temperature rise of +1 to +2 degrees Celsius, already in evidence. Thus, whereas the mean land-ocean temperature rise between 1880-2020 is +1.16 degrees Celsius, the average rise in continental temperatures during this period has already reached +1.6 degrees Celsius, beyond the upper limit proposed by the Paris Accord. The rise in temperatures is driving a three-fold to six-fold rise in extreme weather events since 1980 (Figure 6.), including severe storms, tropical storms, flooding, droughts and wildfires (NOAA 2018).

Figure 6. The growth in the frequency of extreme weather events in the US during 1980-2018

Large-scale melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets, discharging cold ice melt water, is already cooling of parts of the oceans. The clash between cold air masses and tropical fronts would increase storminess, in particular along coastal boundaries and islands. Such storminess, along with intensified tropical cyclones, would render island chains increasingly vulnerable.

To date most suggestions for mitigation and adaptation are woefully inadequate to arrest global warming. Reductions in carbon emissions, which are absolutely essential, may no longer be adequate to arrest accelerating greenhouse gas and temperature levels. At the current level of carbon dioxide (>500 parts per million equivalent CO2+methane+nitrous oxide), reinforced by amplifying feedbacks from land and oceans, the remaining option would be to sequester (down-draw) greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

A global imperative.

Andrew Glikson