Arctic News: extreme weather

Showing posts with label extreme weather. Show all posts

Monday, June 16, 2014

Warming of the Arctic Fueling Extreme Weather

Extreme weather

Heavy rains and floods hit Serbia and Bosnia in May 2014, as discussed in an earlier post.

Later in May, further flooding hit central Europe. From May 30 to June 1, 2014, parts of Austria received the amount of rain that normally falls in two-and-half months: 150 to 200 mm (5.9 to 7.9"), with some parts experiencing 250 mm (9.8").

What is fueling this extreme weather? Have a look at the image below.

The image shows a number of feedbacks that are accelerating warming in the Arctic. Feedback #14 refers to (latent) heat that previously went into melting. With the demise of the snow and ice cover, an increasing proportion of this heat gets absorbed and contributes to accelerated warming in the Arctic.

As the sea ice heats up, 2.06 J/g of heat goes into every degree Celsius that the temperature of the ice rises. While the ice is melting, all energy (at 334J/g) goes into changing ice into water and the temperature remains at 0°C (273.15K, 32°F).

Once all ice has turned into water, all subsequent heat goes into heating up the water, at 4.18 J/g for every degree Celsius that the temperature of water rises.

The amount of energy absorbed by melting ice is as much as it takes to heat an equivalent mass of water from zero to 80°C. The energy required to melt a volume of ice can raise the temperature of the same volume of rock by 150º C.

Currently, the energy equivalent of 1.5 million Hiroshima bombs goes into melting of the Arctic sea ice each year, according to calculations by Sam Carana.

As the ice disappears, this energy will instead be absorbed elsewhere and cause temperatures in the Arctic to rise further, indicated as feedback #14.

This comes on top of the albedo feedback #1 that can on its own more than double the net radiative forcing resulting from the emissions caused by all people of the world, according to calculations by Prof. Peter Wadhams.

Further feedbacks include changes to the polar vortex and jet stream that are in turn causing more extreme weather, as also described in the earlier post Feedbacks in the Arctic.

Global Warming

Higher levels of greenhouse gases are trapping more heat in the atmosphere, resulting in more intense heatwaves in some places, while stronger winds and greater evaporation of water from the sea lead to stronger rainfall in other places. Global warming thus contributes to more extreme weather around the globe.

The Arctic is hit not only by the warming resulting from greenhouse gas emissions, but also by emissions of soot, dust and other compounds that settle on the snow and ice cover and speed up its demise.

As illustrated by the image below, by Nuccitelli et al., most heat goes into the oceans. A substantial amount of heat also goes into the melting of ice.

A lot of ocean heat is transported by the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean. The North Atlantic is hit particularly strongly by pollution from North America, as illustrated by the image below.

[ screenshot from Perdue University's Vulcan animation ]

Heat carried by the Gulf Stream into the Arctic Ocean contributes to high sea surface anomalies in the Arctic, as illustrated by the image below. Arctic sea ice is under threat from heat from the North Atlantic, while heat from the Pacific Ocean that was in part caused by pollution from east-Asia is now threatening to enter the Arctic Ocean through the Bering Strait, as illustrated by the image below that shows areas with sea surface temperature anomalies well over 8 degrees Celsius.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

Warmer water in the Arctic Ocean in turn causes methane to be released from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, as discussed further below.

Accelerated Warming in the Arctic

As said, warming hits the Arctic particularly strongly due to feedbacks such as albedo changes caused by the demise of the snow and ice cover in the Arctic. Another feedback is a changing jet stream. The jet stream used to circumnavigate the globe at high speed, separating climate systems that used to be vastly different above and below the jet stream. Accelerated warming in the Arctic is decreasing the temperature difference between the Arctic and the Equator, in turn causing the jet stream to slow down and become wavier. As a result, air can more easily move north to south and visa versa, especially when the jet stream's waves expand vertically and take a long time to move from west to east (i.e. a blocking pattern).

These changes to the jet stream are fueling extreme weather events. In the May/June event, a large loop had developed in the jet stream over Europe and got stuck in place, making a strong southerly wind carry moisture-laden air from the Mediterranean Sea over Central Europe, clashing with colder air flowing down from the north as the jet stream was stuck in such a blocking pattern.

Record May heat hit northern Finland and surrounding regions of Russia and Sweden. Earlier in May (on May 19) an all-time national heat record was set of 91.4°F (33.0°C) in St. Petersburg, Russia, slashing the previous record by a wide margin. This temperature was unprecedented in records in St. Petersburg that started in 1881 and show a previous May record set in 1958 of 87.6°F (30.9°C).

The compilation below shows the jet stream on three days (May 24, 25 and 27), on top of surface temperature anomalies for those days.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

Further illustrating the event is the animation below, showing the jet stream from May 26 to June 11, 2014. Note that this is a 14.5 MB file that may take some time to fully load.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

Methane

Huge methane emissions took place from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean from September 2013 to March 2014. These emissions have meanwhile risen up higher in the atmosphere and have moved closer to the equator.

Compared to June 2013, mean methane levels at higher altitudes are now well over 10 ppb higher at higher altitudes while there has been only little change closer to the ground. Since these mean levels are global means, the difference is even more pronounced at specific locations on the Northern hemisphere, where clouds of methane originating from the Arctic are contributing to the occurence of heat waves.

The contribution of methane to such heatwaves depends on the density of the methane at the time in the atmosphere over the location during such events.

Highest global mean methane levels varied from 1907 ppb to 1812 ppb for the period June 6 to 15, 2014, as illustrated by the image on the right, and peak methane concentration varied a lot from day to day. On June 6, 2014, peak readings as high as 2516 ppb were recorded.

Indicative for what can be the result is the temperature anomaly on May 19, when temperatures went up as high as 91.4°F (33.0°C) in St. Petersburg, Russia, slashing the previous record by a wide margin, of more than 2°C, as described above

Conclusion

The situation is the Arctic is threatening to escalate into runaway warming and urgently requires comprehensive and effective action as discussed at the Climate Plan blog.

References

- May 2014 Global Weather Extremes Summary

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/weatherhistorian/comment.html?entrynum=281

Post by Sam Carana.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Escalating extreme weather events to hammer humanity

By Paul Beckwith

Extreme weather events are rocketing upwards in their frequency of occurrence, intensity, and duration and are impacting new regions that are unprepared. These events, such as torrential rains, are causing floods and damaging crops and infrastructure like roads, rail, pipelines, and buildings. Cities, states, and entire countries are being battered and inundated resulting in disruption to many peoples lives as well as enormous economic losses. As bad as this is, it is going to get much worse by at least 10 to 20 times. Why?

Greenhouse gas emissions from humans have changed the chemistry of the atmosphere. The optical absorption of infrared heat has increased in the atmosphere which raises temperature, and thus water vapor content, and therefore fuels more intense storms. The jet streams that guide these storms are slower and wavier and more fractured and cause our weather gyrations and weird behavior. Areas far north can get very warm, while areas far south can get very cold. Some areas get persistent drought. Then, the pattern can flip. The jet streams are much wavier in the north-south direction since the Arctic temperatures have warmed 5 to 8 times faster than the global average. This reduces the temperature difference between the Arctic and equator and basic physics forces the jets to slow and get wavier.

Why is the Arctic warming greatly amplified? The region is darkening and thus absorbing more sunlight, since the land-based snow cover in spring and the Arctic sea ice cover volume are both declining exponentially. The white snow and ice is being replaced by dark surfaces like the ocean and the tundra. The most detailed computer model on sea ice decline is a U.S. Naval Graduate School model, and it shows the sea ice cover could be gone by late summer in 2016. If this happens, the Arctic warming will rocket upwards, the jets will distort much more, and the extreme weather events will rocket upwards in frequency, amplitude, and duration and civilization will be hammered.

Paul Beckwith

Paul Beckwith is part-time professor with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa. Paul teaches climatology/meteorology and does PhD research on 'Abrupt climate change in the past and present'. Paul holds an M.Sc. in laser physics and a B.Eng. in engineering physics and reached the rank of chess master in a previous life. Below are Paul's earlier posts at the Arctic-news blog.

Are Alberta’s Tar Sands prepared for a torrential rain event?

by Paul Beckwith

In recent months we have endured incredible tropical-equatorial-like torrential rain events occurring at mid-latitudes across the planet. For example, in North America we experienced intense rainfall in the Banff region of the Rockies from June 19th to 24th and the enormous volume of water moved downhill through the river systems taking out small towns and running into the heart of Calgary where it caused $5.3 billion dollars of infrastructure damage; the largest in Canadian history.

Next, it was Toronto’s turn, with 75 mm of rain falling from 5 to 6pm on July 8 (with up to 150 mm overall in some regions) leading to widespread flooding and $1.45 billion dollars in damages. As bad as these events were, they were dwarfed by the intense rainfalls hitting the state of Colorado from Sept 9th to 15th.

Rainfall amounts that would normally fall over 6 months to a year were experienced in less than a week. Widespread flash floods, landslides, and torrents of water ripped apart roads, fracking equipment and pipelines on (at least) hundreds of fossil fuel sites (mostly ignored by mainstream media) (http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/09/19/media-ignores-damaged-oil-and-gas-tanks-colorado-floods). The level of destruction was simply horrifying, as captured by a man with a plane and a camera. But we have no grounds for complaint, since the widespread flooding in central Europe from May 30th to June 6th caused a much larger $22 billion in damages.

So what is happening? Why are we experiencing so many of these severe weather flooding events that are supposed to only occur every 1000 years or so? Will they keep occurring? What city will be hit next? Can the Alberta tar sands be hit by such an event? What would be the implications?

Abrupt Climate Change In Real-Time

Humans have benefited greatly from a stable climate for the last 11,000 years - roughly 400 generations. Not anymore. We now face an angry climate. One that we have poked in the eye with our fossil fuel stick and awakened. Now we must deal with the consequences. We must set aside our differences and prepare for what we can no longer avoid. And that is massive disruption to our civilizations.

In a nutshell, the logical chain of events occurring is as follows:

Greenhouse gases that humans are putting into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels are trappingextra heat in the earth system (distributed between the oceans (93%), the cryosphere (glaciers, ice sheets, sea ice for 3%), the earth surface (rocks, vegetation, etc. for 3%) and the atmosphere (only an amazingly low 1%). The oceans clearly get the lions share of the energy, and if that 1% heating the atmosphere varies there can be decades of higher or lower warming, as we have seen recently. This water vapor rises and cools condensing into clouds and releasing its stored latent heat which is increasing storm intensity.
(i)Rapidly declining Arctic sea ice (losing about 12% of volume per decade) and (ii)snow cover (losing about 22% of coverage in June per decade) and (iii)darkening of Greenland all cause more solar absorption on the surface and thus amplified Arctic warming (global temperatures have increased (on average) about 0.17^oC per decade, the Arctic has increased > 1^oC per decade, or about 6x faster)
Equator-to-Arctic temperature difference is thus decreasing rapidly
Less heat transfer occurs from equator to pole (via atmosphere, and thus jet streams become streakier and wavier and slower in west-to-east direction, and via ocean currents (like Gulf Stream, which slows and overruns continental shelf on Eastern seaboard of U.S.)
Storms (guided by jet streams) are slower and sticking and with more water content are dumping huge torrential rain quantities on cities and widespread regions at higher latitudes than is “normal”.
A relatively rare meteorological event called an “atmospheric river” is now much more common, and injects huge quantities of water over several days to specific regions, such as Banff (with water running downhill to Calgary) and Toronto and Colorado events.

It is well past the time that politicians and governments need to act to address these issues. This breakdown of the global atmospheric circulation pattern is well underway now, with a global average temperature only 0.8^oC above the pre-industrial revolution levels. With extreme weather events this terrible now, it is highly irrational, in fact reckless, to continue to have global meetings and discussions about whether or not 2^oC is safe. Only 0.8^oC is wreaking havoc on global infrastructure today. As climate change proceeds and accelerates and we move further from the stable state that we are familiar with (“old climate”) to a much warmer world (“new climate”) we will experience worsening weather extremes and a huge “whiplashing” of events (throughout our present “transition period”).

For a notion of whiplashing, consider the Mississippi River. There were record river flow rates from high river basin rainfall in 2011, followed by record drought and record low river water levels in December, 2012 making it necessary for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers to hydraulically break apart rock on the riverbed to keep the countries vital economic transportation link open to barge traffic. Then, 6 months later, the river was back up to record levels. Incredible swings of fortune.

Mitigation at a global level is dysfunctional and inadequate

Adaption has not worked out too well for Calgary, or Toronto, or Colorado, or numerous other places. Let us not be surprised when a similar torrential rain event hits Ottawa, or Vancouver, or even the Alberta tar sand tailing ponds. In Alberta, tailings ponds would be breached and the toxic waters would overflow the Athabasca River and carry the pollutants up into the north to exit into the Arctic Ocean. Such an event would be catastrophic to the environment and economy of Canada.

How can this risk be ignored? Will the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report AR5 released on September 27th once again be ignored by society?

Paul Beckwith is a part-time professor with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa. He teaches second year climatology/meteorology. His PhD research topic is “Abrupt climate change in the past and present.” He holds an M.Sc. in laser physics and a B.Eng. in engineering physics and reached the rank of chess master in a previous life.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

The Social Tipping Point

by Paul Beckwith

Abrupt Climate Change is happening today, big time!

Abrupt climate change. It is happening today, big time. The northern hemisphere atmospheric circulation system is doing its own thing, without the guidance of a stable jet stream. The jet stream is fractured into meandering and stuck streaked segments, which are hoovering up water vapor and directing it day after day to unlucky localized regions, depositing months or seasons worth of rain in only a few days, turning these locales into water worlds and trashing all infrastructure like houses, roads, train tracks and pipelines. Creating massive sinkholes and catastrophic landslides. And climate change is only getting warmed up.

In the Arctic methane is coming out of the thawing permafrost. Both on land and under the ocean on the sea floor. The Yedoma permafrost in Siberia is now belching out methane at greatly accelerated rates due to intense warming. The collapsing sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is exposing the open ocean to greatly increased solar absorption and turbulent mixing from wave action due to persistent cyclonic activity. Massive cyclonic activity will trash large portions of the sea ice if positioned to export broken ice via the Fram Strait.

We have lost our stable climate

What does it all mean? There is no new normal? Far from it. We have lost our stable climate. Likely permanently. Rates of change are greatly exceeding anything in the paleorecords. By at least 10x, and more likely >30x. We are heading to a much warmer world. The transition will be brutal for civilization.

Can we avoid this? Stop it? Probably not? At least with climate reality being suppressed by corporations and their government employees. With their relentless push for more and more fossil fuel infrastructure and mining and drilling.

What else can we expect as we negotiate our abrupt transition in climate to a much warmer world?

Craziness, in a nutshell. Temperatures over land surfaces in the far north have been consistently over 25 C for weeks, due to persistent high pressure atmospheric blocks leading to clear skies and unblocked solar exposure. Water temperatures in rivers and streams in the far north have resulted in large fish kills as their ecological mortality thresholds have been exceeded. Many other regions are experiencing strange incidences of animal mortality. Mass migrations of animals towards the poles are occurring on land and sea, at startling rates, in an effort for more hospitable surroundings for survival. Shifting food source distributions is causing even hardier, less vulnerable species to be severely stressed. For example, dolphins are being stranded or dying, birds are dropping out of the sky, and new parasites and bacteria are proliferating with warmer temperatures.

In regions of the world undergoing severe droughts the vegetation and soils are drying and fires are exploding in size, frequency, and severity. Especially hard-hit are large regions of the US southwest, southern Europe, and large swaths of Asia. Who knows if forests that are leveled by fire will eventually be reforested; it all depends on what type of climate establishes in the region.

What about coastal regions around the world and sea levels? Not looking too good for the home team. In 2012 Greenland tossed off about 700 Gt (Gt=billion tons) of sea ice, from both melting and calving. As the ice melts it is darkening from concentrated contaminants being exposed, from much greater areas of low albedo meltwater pools, and from fresh deposits of black carbon ash from northern forest fires. Even more worrying are ominous signs of increasing movement. GPS sensor anchored to the 3 km thick glaciers hundreds of km from the coast are registering increased sliding. Meltwater moulins are chewing through the ice from the surface to the bedrock and are transporting heat downward, softening up the ice bonded to the bedrock and allowing sliding. Eventually, large chunks will slide into the ocean causing tsunamis and abrupt sea level rises. Many regions of the sea floor around Greenland are scarred from enormous calving episodes in the past.

The Social Tipping Point

On a positive note, this knowledge of our changing climate threat is filtering out to greater numbers of the slumbering public that has been brainwashed into lethargy by the protectors of the status quo. As more and more people see the trees dying in their back yards and their cities and houses and roads buckling under unrelenting torrential rains they are awaking to the threat. And there will be a threshold crossed and a tipping point reached in human behavior. An understanding of the reality of the risks we face. And finally global concerted action. To slash emissions. And change our ways. And retool our economies and reset our priorities. And not take our planet for granted.

The above compilation of IPCC and NOAA images is by Peter Carter, who adds the following comment:

I agree. The IPCC in 2007 said: "The concentration of CO2 is now 379 parts per million (ppm) and methane is greater than 1,774 parts per billion (ppb), both very likely much higher than any time in at least 650 kyr (during which CO2 remained between 180 and 300 ppm and methane between 320 and 790 ppb). The recent rate of change is dramatic and unprecedented; increases in CO2 never exceeded 30 ppm in 1 kyr – yet now CO2 has risen by 30 ppm in just the last 17 years."

By definition this is abrupt heating. because atmospheric GHG concentration correlates directly with radiative forcing. CO2 is now 397 ppm and methane is now 1830 ppb ! It follows that the rate of ice being melted will also (as it looks) be unprecedented. The only force we have against mad fossil fuel pushing governments is accountability. They have to be made to face the full terrible consequences of their action on energy and inaction on climate. They are destroying the world.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Extreme Weather Warning

Above image is from NOAA Storm Prediction Center, with Convective Watches in red.

Below, storm reports, from the same site.

For an update on the current situation in your area, see:

http://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/watch/

Meanwhile, in Canada, Paul Beckwith gives more background on 'Our rapidly changing climate and weather'.

Paul Beckwith
Part-time professor, PhD student (abrupt climate change), Department of Geography
Location: University of Ottawa, in the hub next to the university bookstore

Description:

Not a typical January in Ottawa. 10 degrees C for several days one week; -30 the next; followed by 10 the one after that. Why?

Normally the high altitude jet streams that circle the planet are predominantly from west to east with little waviness. Weather is cold and dry northward of the jets (Arctic air sourced) and warm and wet southward (moist tropics and ocean sourced). Now, and moving forward, the jets are extremely wavy and as the crests and troughs of the waves sweep by us each week we experience the massive swings in temperature. The extreme jet waviness is due to a very large reduction in the equator-to-Arctic temperature gradient caused by an exponentially declining Arctic reflectivity from sea-ice and snow cover collapses (which causes great amplification of Arctic temperatures). Additional amplification is occurring due to rapidly rising methane concentrations sourced from sea-floor sediments and terrestrial permafrost.

Observed changes will accelerate as late summer sea-ice completely vanishes from Arctic within a few years. Largest human impacts will be food supply shortages and increases in severity, frequency, and duration of extreme weather events.

In the video below, by Gzowski Films, Paul Beckwith speaks on our radical weather patterns.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Arctic anomalies linked to extreme weather

Surface temperature anomalies of 20 degrees Celsius are not uncommon in the Arctic these days. The image below shows surface temperature anomalies on November 9 and 10, 2012.

Paul Beckwith, regular contributor to this blog, comments as follows on the conditions in the Arctic:

“The Arctic meteorology is unprecedented at the moment. Huge ridges of high pressure are crossing the Arctic ocean cutting off the Siberian cold region from the North American region. Very little cold air is present in the entire system, and it is exhibiting very bizzare fragmentation. Nothing like a “normal” polar vortex is apparent.

The ridge could just be due to this greatly reduced volume of cold air, but I suspect there is much more to the situation then that. It seems that there must be some source of heat to create this ridge. Could be warm air rising up from open water regions in the Arctic, however most of the warm water is now isolated from the atmosphere by the sea ice.

It seems more likely to me that the high levels of methane with GWP > 150 or higher are causing higher long-wave absorption and heating in these regions, but I have not seen methane concentration distributions over the Arctic from AIRS satellites lately.”

So, let's have a look at the methane levels for those days. The image below shows the methane levels for the above two days.

Paul continues:

“This is what abrupt climate change looks like. In the paleorecords global average temperatures increased over 6 degrees C within a decade or two, I suppose we will know more precise numbers in a few short years.”

Paul repeats the prediction he made back in June in this the post When the sea ice is gone

Paul Beckwith, B.Eng, M.Sc. (Physics),
Ph. D. student (Climatology) and
Part-time Professor, University of Ottawa

My projections for our planet conditions when the sea-ice has all vanished year round (PIOMAS graph projects about 2024 for this; I forecast 2020 for this) are:

Average global temperature: 22°C (+/- 1°C)
(rise of 6-8°C above present day value of about 15°C)

Average equatorial temperature: 32°C
(rise of 2 °C above present day value of 30°C)

Average Arctic pole temperature: 10°C
(rise of 30°C above present day value of -20°C)

Average Antarctica pole temperature: -46°C
(rise of 4°C above present day value of -50°C)

Water vapor in atmosphere: higher by 50%
(rise of 4% over last 30 years, i.e. about 1.33% rise per decade)

Average temperature gradient from equator to North pole: 22°C
(decrease of 28°C versus present day value of 50°C)

Very weak jet streams (driven by N-S humidity gradient and weak temperature gradient as opposed to existing large temperature gradient)

- Result: very fragmented, disjointed weather systems
- Basic weather: tropical rainforest like in some regions; arid deserts in others with few regions in between.

Note: This scenario would require significant emissions of methane from the Arctic. Without this methane, the scenario would still occur but would take longer. Disclaimer: Best guess and subject to rolling revisions!

Meanwhile, extreme weather continues to strike areas outside the Arctic. In the U.K, airports were closed due to snow, following a period of heavy rainfall in November.

In Russia, extreme weather caused a huge traffic jam; see the BBC reports here and here, prompting Veli Albert Kallio, also one of this blog's contributors, to make the following comments:

Veli Albert Kallio in front of Peter Wadhams and John Nissen at
APPCCG event, March 13, 2012, House of Commons, London

“The Ewing-Dunn Precipitation (the lake-effect snow) from warmed-up Arctic Ocean has taken the Russian Government's winter preparations by suprise of its severity, with the Russian Government minister banging his fist as standing queues of vehicles reoccurs and is now 190 kilometres (120 miles) long between the capital Moscow and St. Petersburg.

I have been warning from the leaked files since July at this and other groups that December 2012 was going to be like this. We need to tell the Russian Interior Minister who bangs his fist on TV that he should not blame his road officials, but the global warming and loss of sea ice from the Barents and Kara Seas and generally warmed up North Atlantic - Arctic Ocean regions.”

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Threat to global food supply makes comprehensive action imperative

Climate change is strongly affecting the Arctic and the resulting changes to the polar vortex and jet stream are in turn contributing to extreme weather in many places, followed by crop loss at a huge scale.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a September 6, 2012, forecast that continued deterioration of cereal crop prospects over the past two months, due to unfavourable weather conditions in a number of major producing regions, has led to a sharp cut in FAO’s world production forecast since the previous report in July.

The bad news continues: Based on the latest indications, global cereal production would not be sufficient to cover fully the expected utilization in the 2012/13 marketing season, pointing to a larger drawdown of global cereal stocks than earlier anticipated. Among the major cereals, maize and wheat were the most affected by the worsening of weather conditions.

The image below shows the FAO Food Price Index (Cereals), updated to October 2012.

Apart from crop yield, extreme weather is also affecting soils in various ways. Sustained drought can cause soils to lose much of their vegetation, making them more exposed to erosion by wind, while the occasional storms, flooding and torrential rain further contribute to erosion. Higher areas, such as hills, will be particularly vulnerable, but even in valleys a lack of trees and excessive irrigation can cause the water table to rise, bringing salt to the surface.

Fish are also under threat, in part due to ocean acidification. Of the carbon dioxide we're releasing into the atmosphere, about a third is (still) being absorbed by the oceans. Dr. Richard Feely, from NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, explains that this has caused, over the last 200 years or so, about a 30% increase in the overall acidity of the oceans. This affects species that depend on a shell to survive. Studies by Baumann (2011) and Frommel (2011) indicate further that fish, in their egg and larval life stages, are seriously threatened by ocean acidification. This, in addition to warming seawater, overfishing, pollution and eutrification (dead zones), causes fish to lose habitat and is threatening major fish stock collapse.

Without action, this situation can only be expected to deteriorate further, while ocean acidification is irreversible on timescales of at least tens of thousands of years. This means that, to save many marine species from extinction, geoengineering must be accepted as an essential part of the much-needed comprehensive plan of action.

Similarly, Arctic waters will continue to be exposed to warm water, causing further sea ice decline unless comprehensive action is taken that includes geoengineering methods to cool the Arctic. The image below shows the dramatic drop in sea ice extent (total area of at least 15% ice concentration) over the past 7 years, compared to the average 1972-2011, as calculated by the Polar View team at the University of Bremen, Germany. This illustrates that a firm commitment to a comprehensive plan of action can now no longer be postponed.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

How extreme will it get?

The January-June period was the warmest first half of any year on record for the contiguous United States, reports NOAA in its June 2012 overview. The national temperature of 52.9°F was 4.5°F (2.5°C) above average.

The United States Department of Agriculture has designated 1,016 primary counties in 26 states as natural disaster areas, making it the largest natural disaster in America ever.

The U.S. Drought Monitor has declared 80% of the Contiguous U.S. to be abnormally dry or worse, with 61% experiencing drought conditions ranging from moderate to exceptional—the largest percentage in the 12-year history of the service.

In the 18 primary corn-growing states, 30% of the crop is in poor or very poor condition. In addition, fully half of the nation’s pastures and ranges are in poor or very poor condition. The year-to-date acreage burned by wildfires has increased to 3.1 million.

NOAA reports record temperatures in many places; in Mc Cook, Neb., it was 115°F (46°C) on June 26, while in Norton Dam, Kan., it was 118°F (48°C) on June 28. Meanwhile, it was 126°F (52°C) in Death Valley National Park on July 10, 2012.

Lake Michigan surface water temperatures recently reached temperatures of up to 83.9°F (29°C), as shown on the image right. Lake Michigan has a surface area of 22,400 square miles (58,000 square kilometers). The lake's average depth is 279 ft (85 m), while its greatest depth is 923 ft (281 m). The image below compares 2012 surface water temperature with the average for 1992-2011.

Earlier this year, in March 2012, another heatwave hit much the same area. A NOAA analysis of the heatwave notes the abrupt onset of the warmth at Minneapolis, Duluth, and International Falls on 10 March. On subsequent days, anomalies of well over 20°C (36°F) were recorded as shown on the image on the right.

Temperature anomalies of 27+°F (15+°C) were recorded in a large area from March 12th to March 23rd, 2012, as shown below.

Global warming is responsible for much of the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events and this is linked to developments in the Arctic, where accelerated warming is changing the jet stream, concludes an analysis by Rutgers University professor Jennifer Francis.

Apart from the obvious impact that droughts and heatwaves have on food and fresh water supply, they also come with wildfires that cause additional emissions, constituting a further positive feedback that further contributes to global warming, while the additional soot makes things even worse in the Arctic.

All this combines to create a situation in the Arctic where extreme local warming events can trigger methane releases, causing further local warming and further releases of methane, in a vicious cycle that threatens to escalate into runaway global warming that feeds on itself.

The above image pictures the three kinds of warming (red lines) and their main causes:

Emissions by people cause global warming, with temperatures rising around the globe, including the Arctic.
Soot, dust and volatile organic compounds settle down on snow and ice, causing albedo change. More heat is absorbed, rather than reflected as was previously the case. This causes accelerated warming in the Arctic.
Accelerated warming in the Arctic threatens to weaken methane stores in the Arctic with the danger that releases will cause runaway global warming.

In addition, there are at least three feedback effects (gold lines) that make things even worse:

Fires feedback: Accelerated warming in the Arctic is changing the Jet Stream, contributing to increased frequency and intensity of droughts and heatwaves.
Albedo feedback: Accelerated warming in the Arctic also speeds up the decline of ice and snow cover, further accelerating albedo change.
Methane feedback: Methane releases in the Arctic further add to the acceleration of warming in the Arctic, further contributing to weaken Arctic methane stores, in a vicious cycle that threatens to escalate into runaway global warming.

Rapid warming periods in the past constitute an ominous warning. In a paper published about a year ago, Ruhl et al. conclude that the end-Triassic mass extinction, about 200 million years ago, started with global warming due to carbon dioxide from volcanoes. This also caused warming of oceans and melting of hydrates at the bottom of the sea, containing methane created by millions of years of decomposing sea life. The hydrates released some 12,000 gigatons of methane, causing global warming to accelerate and resulting in sudden extinction of about half the species on Earth at the time.

The above image pictures how a similar thing could happen in our times, with global warming leading to accelerated warming in the Arctic, triggering hydrate destabilization and abrupt release of, say, 1 Gt of methane, which would further accelerate Arctic warming and lead to subsequent releases of methane from hydrates.

For more details on above two graphs, see the page How much time is there left to act?

Could extreme weather, like the U.S. is now experiencing, also occur in the Arctic?

Well, it actually did, not too long ago. Above image on the right, from the Cryosphere Today, shows air temperature anomalies in the Arctic of up to 6°C (10.8°F) for the month September 2007.

By how much will the sea warm up during such extreme local warming events?

The image on the right, produced with NOAA data, shows mean coastal sea surface temperatures of over 10°C (50°F) in some areas in the Arctic on August 22, 2007.

How extreme was this?

The image below, from NOAA, shows that sea surface temperature anomalies of over 5.5 were recorded for August 2007 in some areas in the Arctic.

Could such warming reach the bottom of the sea?

Again, this did happen in 2007, when strong polynya activity caused more summertime open water in the Laptev Sea, in turn causing more vertical mixing of the water column during storms in late 2007, according to one study, and bottom water temperatures on the mid-shelf increased by more than 3°C (5.4°F) compared to the long-term mean.

Another study finds that drastic sea ice shrinkage causes increase in storm activities and deepening of the wind-wave-mixing layer down to depth ~50 m (164 ft) that enhance methane release from the water column to the atmosphere. Indeed, the danger is that heat will warm up sediments under the sea, containing methane in hydrates and as free gas, causing large amounts of this methane to escape rather abruptly into the atmosphere.

Would this heat be able to penetrate sediments?

The image on the right, from a study by Hovland et al., shows that hydrates can exist at the end of conduits in the sediment, formed when methane did escape from such hydrates in the past. Heat can travel down such conduits relatively fast, warming up the hydrates and destabilizing them in the process, which can result in huge abrupt releases of methane.

Since waters can be very shallow in the Arctic, much of the methane can rise up through these waters without getting oxidized.

Shakova and Semiletov warn, in a 2010 presentation, that some 75% of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) is shallower than 50 m, as shown on the image below. Furthermore, the ESAS region alone has an accumulated methane potential of some 1700 Gt in the form of free gas and hydrates under the sediment, in addition to organic carbon in its permafrost.

As the methane causes further warming in the atmosphere, this will contribute to the danger of even further methane escaping, further accelerating local warming, in a vicious cycle that can lead to catastrophic conditions well beyond the Arctic.

Above image shows the carbon in the melting permafrost, estimated by Schuur et al. at 1700 Gt. Much of this carbon could also be released as methane under warmer and wetter conditions.

Under warmer and dry conditions, things wouldn't be much better. The 2010 heatwave in Russia provides a gloomy preview of what could happen as temperatures rise at high latitudes. Firestorms in the peat-lands, tundras and forests in Siberia could release huge amounts of emissions, including soot, much of which could settle on the ice in the Himalaya Tibetan plateau, melting the glaciers there and causing short-term flooding, followed by rapid decline of the flow of ten of Asia's largest river systems that originate there, with more than a billion people's livelihoods depending on the continued flow of this water.

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