Seafloor methane tipping point crossed in 2024?

The heat in December 2023 was felt most strongly in the Arctic, as illustrated by the NASA image below, showing anomalies above 1951-1980 as high as 9.9°C. 

. 

The image below further illustrates heat striking the northern latitudes in 2023, showing that the temperature anomaly in 2023 was 2.19°C above 1880-1920 in between 24°North and the North Pole. 

The danger is that ocean heat could abruptly be pushed from the North Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean, temporarily raising temperatures at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, as discussed in earlier posts such as this one. 

Terrifying rise of Northern Hemisphere ocean temperature anomalies

The image shows the terrifying rise of Northern Hemisphere ocean temperature anomalies from 1901-2000, illustrating crossing of two tipping points, i.e. the Latent Heat Tipping Point and the Seafloor Methane Tipping Point.

This threatens to cause rapid destabilization of methane hydrates at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and lead to explosive eruptions of methane, as its volume increases 160 to 180-fold when leaving the hydrates. 

The image is an update of the image below, from a 2023 post and added here for reference purposes. Check out that post for more on the Latent Heat tipping Point and the Seafloor Methane Tipping Point.

Note that the above analyses are for annual data. An earlier analysis using monthly data shows that the seafloor methane tipping point was reached in August 2023. 

The danger is that, as the latent heat buffer disappears, incoming ocean heat can no longer be consumed by sea ice, but will instead heat up sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic ocean.

Latent heat loss, feedback #14 on the Feedbacks page

Ominously, sea surface temperatures (60°South-60°North) are on the rise in 2024, as illustrated by the image below.

The image below, adapted from NOAA, shows how high temperatures line up with El Niño months.

[ click on images to enlarge ]

Annual temperature anomalies as high as 2.5°C above pre-industrial

The temperature anomaly in 2023 may be as high as 2.5°C above pre-industrial, as illustrated by the image below.

For more on the analysis behind this potential rise of 2.5°C, see the pre-industrial page. Acknowledging the full strength of the rise is important, because of the feedbacks that come with it. Rising temperatures result in more water vapor getting in the atmosphere (7% more water vapor for every 1°C warming), further amplifying the temperature rise, since water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas. 

The IPCC likes people to believe that the temperature rise is only 1.1°C above pre-industrial, in which case there would be only 7.7% more water vapor in the atmosphere, but with a 2.5°C rise, there would be 17.5% more water vapor in the atmosphere. Those who seek to downplay the danger act as if changes to the Jet Stream and to ocean currents, Arctic sea ice, methane and water vapor can all be ignored.

Humans will likely go extinct with a 3°C rise. The image below shows annual mean global surface temperature (Land-Ocean) created with NASA Land-Ocean temperature anomaly versus 1902-1920, further adjusted by 0.99°C to reflect ocean air temperature, higher polar anomalies and an earlier (pre-industrial) base. The blue line shows a polynomial trend based on 1880-2023 data, indicating that a 3°C rise could eventuate by 2035. The magenta line shows a polynomial trend based on data from a shorter period (2010-2023), which better reflects short term variables such as El Niño and which indicates that a 3°C rise could eventuate as early as in 2024, i.e. this year. 

Note again that the above analyses are for annual data. An earlier analysis using monthly data shows that the September 2023 NASA Land+Ocean temperature was 1.78°C higher than it was in September 1923. The anomaly is 1.74°C when compared to a base centered around the year 1900 (1885-1915). This 1.74°C anomaly can be adjusted by 0.99°C to reflect a pre-industrial base, air temperature and higher polar anomalies, adding up to a potential anomaly of 2.73°C.

Climate Emergency Declaration

The situation is dire and the precautionary principle calls for rapid, comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the situation, as described in this 2022 post, where needed in combination with a Climate Emergency Declaration, as discussed at the Climate Emergency Declaration group.


Links

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

• Sea surface temperature at record high
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2023/03/sea-surface-temperature-at-record-high.html

• 2024 looks to be worse than 2023
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2024/01/2024-looks-to-be-worse-than-2023.html

• Climate Reanalyzer - Daily sea surface temperatures
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily

• NOAA - Northern Hemisphere ocean temperature anomalies vs 1991-2020
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-glance/global/time-series/nhem/ocean/12/12/1850-2023

• NOAA - Monthly temperature anomalies versus El Niño
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202313/supplemental/page-2

• NOAA - Climate Prediction Center - ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf

• Cold freshwater lid on North Atlantic
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/cold-freshwater-lid-on-north-atlantic.html

• Albedo, latent heat, insolation and more
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/albedo.html

• Latent Heat
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/latent-heat.html

• The Threat of Global Warming causing Near-Term Human Extinction
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/threat.html

• Feedbacks
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/feedbacks.html

• Pre-industrial
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/pre-industrial.html

• When Will We Die?

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/06/when-will-we-die.html

• Extinction
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html

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

• Climate Emergency Declaration
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climate-emergency-declaration.html

Crossing 1.5C - On track toward an uninhabitable Earth

by Andrew Glikson

“… but they can be sure that they won't be recorded for their crimes in history -- because there won't be any history” (Noam Chomsky, 2023)

The macabre criminality of world’s so-called leaders, coupled with the ignorant compliance of a majority of the victims of global heating and potential nuclear annihilation, belong to the inconceivable. It is not clear whether any climate scientists are left to whom governments are listening, for if they did, they would learn that the intensification of extreme weather events currently and later in the century is bound to render large parts of the planet uninhabitable. In particular of islands ravaged by cyclones and sea level rise, extensive tropical and subtropical coastal zones and lands subjected to storms, floods, draughts and fires, in Africa, Australia and India. Polar-sourced cold fronts crossing the weakening jet stream boundary are already disrupting North America, Siberia and Europe, as are warm air masses penetrating the Arctic circle.

Distracted by a series of horrific bloodsheds induced by toxic masculinity of alpha males around the world, propagated by the “media”, the multitudes are only dimly aware of the oncoming climate carnage, orders of magnitude bigger than currently forecast.

According to leading climate scientists like James Hansen and his colleagues: “Without major action to reduce emissions, global temperature is on track to rise by 2.5°C to 4.5°C by 2100” (NASA 2023). It is far from clear whether anything can be done to arrest or reverse global heating, for as temperatures rise so is the production of fossil fuels enhanced by science-ignorant hordes of politicians and economists oblivious to the basic laws of physics. Alternative clean energy without sharp cuts in fossil fuel combustion can hardly stem global heating.

[ Figure. 1. Daily surface temperature analysis from the ECMWF reanalysis version 5 (ERA5). ]

December was the 7th consecutive month of record-shattering global temperature (Figure 1.), driven by the combination of a moderately strong El Nino and a large decrease of Earth’s albedo. Hansen et al. (2024) expect record monthly temperatures to continue into mid-2024, due to the present large planetary energy imbalance, with the 12- month running-mean global temperature reaching +1.6-1.7°C relative to 1880-1920. It will be clear that the 1.5°C ceiling has been passed for all practical purposes, and that the mean global temperature is currently accelerating toward 2.0°C above pre-industrial temperature by the middle of the decade (Figure 2), while the Arctic has been warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world over the last 43 years, on average around 3℃ warmer than it was in 1980. Over the past 30 years Antarctica has been one of the fastest-changing places on Earth, warming more than 3 times than the rest of the world.

[ Figure. 2. Global temperature relative to 1880-1920 based on the GISS analysis
(Goddard Institute of Space Studies) analysis - by James Hansen et al., 2024. ]

A projection by NOAA states: “While we cannot stop global warming overnight, we can slow the rate and limit the amount of global warming by reducing human emissions of heat-trapping gases and soot (“black carbon”). Unfortunately, this projection takes neither the amplifying feedback, i.e. from warming oceans, melting ice sheets, migrating climate zones and melting of methane, nor the time factor into account.

A factor rarely taken into account emerges from Hansen et al. (1996)'s paper “Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modelling, and modern observations that 2°C global warming could be dangerous” (Figure 3). Here the flow of cold ice melt water results in formation of large cold-water pools of in the Atlantic and Southern oceans, inducing a contraction of the tropical climate zone and an overall decline in mean global temperatures. The collision between the cold air and water fronts and the tropical warm air mass would lead to severe storms over large tracts of Earth.

Likely transient respites in global warming (stadials) may take place over the next few centuries or longer, when the flow of cold ice-melt water from the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets (Bronselaer et al., 2018; Glikson, 2019) reduces the mean rate of warming, although this may occur too late for civilization (Figure 3).

[ Figure 3. Surface air temperature (°C) relative to 1880-1920 for several scenarios - by James Hansen et al. 2016.
Future model transient cooling periods consequent on flow of ice meltwater from Greenland and Antarctica into oceans ]

The criminal insanity of political, military, strategic, economic leaders, matched by the blindness of billions, supports what has been referred to as Fermi’s Paradox ─ where the apparent absence of signals from technological civilizations in the Milky Way, may be explained in terms of a self-destruction of such civilizations.

Having ignored climate science, dismissed or fired climate scientists and repeatedly confected lies, while global heating accelerates with deleterious consequences, Homo “sapiens” is finding itself on track toward carbon poisoning of the atmosphere, the lungs of the inhabitable Earth, acidification of the hydrosphere and coating of the land with carbon and plastics.

A/Prof. Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist

Andrew Glikson

Books:

The Asteroid Impact Connection of Planetary Evolution
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400763272
The Archaean: Geological and Geochemical Windows into the Early Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319079073
The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319572369
The Event Horizon: Homo Prometheus and the Climate Catastrophe
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030547332
Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319225111
Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropocene Climate Event Horizon
https://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
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319745442
The Fatal Species: From Warlike Primates to Planetary Mass Extinction
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030754679
The Trials of Gaia. Milestones in the evolution of Earth with reference to the Antropocene
https://www.amazon.com.au/Trials-Gaia-Milestones-Evolution-Anthropocene/dp/3031237080

2024 looks to be worse than 2023

The year 2024 looks to be worse than the year 2023. The above chart shows sea surface temperatures that were extremely high in 2023 followed by a steep rise in 2024, crossing 21°C in early January 2024.

The chart below illustrates this further, showing the daily sea surface temperature anomaly using 1 Sep. 1981 to 31 Dec. 2023 data versus the 1982-2011 mean for latitudes between 60°S and 60°N.

The importance of sea surface temperatures

Slowing down of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) results in less ocean heat reaching the Arctic Ocean and, instead, a huge amount of ocean heat has been accumulating in the North Atlantic in 2023.

Much of the heat in the North Atlantic could soon be pushed abruptly into the Arctic Ocean, as storms can temporarily speed up currents strongly, carrying huge amounts of ocean heat with them into the Arctic Ocean.

The mechanism behind this has been described often in earlier posts and this page. Meltwater and rain can cause a freshwater lid to form and grow at the surface of the North Atlantic and this, in combination with greater stratification as ocean temperatures rise (above image), can enable more ocean heat to increasingly travel underneath this lid from the North Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean, and especially so at times when Jet Stream changes are causing storms that speed up ocean currents along this path.

The danger is illustrated by the above image, showing a forecast for January 11, 2024, with the Jet Stream moving almost vertically over the North Atlantic to the north. The image below shows heat over the North Atlantic, with temperatures reaching as high as 10.5°C or 50.8°F over Greenland (at the green circle) at 1000 hPa on January 10, 2024, 07:00 UTC.

The image below shows 2 meter temperature anomalies on January 11, 2024. 

Very high sea surface temperature anomalies can occur in the path of the Gulf Stream, as illustrated by the image below showing high sea surface temperatures on January 3, 2024, as high as 11.7°C (21°F) at the green circle, over the counterpart of the Gulf Stream in the Pacific, off the coast of Japan. 

Earlier posts have warned about this, such as this post and this video, almost seven years ago. This could cause events during which much ocean heat moves abruptly into the Arctic Ocean, resulting in seafloor methane releases, overwhelming of the latent heat buffer and causing sea ice loss (and thus albedo loss), as well as loss of lower clouds (thus causing further albedo loss), while open oceans are also less efficient than sea ice when it comes to emitting in the far-infrared region of the spectrum and while an ice-free Arctic Ocean will also release more ocean heat into the atmosphere.

Arctic sea ice volume is very low for the time of year, as illustrated by the above image.

A large part of the thicker sea ice is located off Greenland's East Coast, as illustrated by the above image. Much of the sea ice will therefore rapidly disappear as the water heats up in 2024.

The above image, adapted from tropicaltidbits.com, shows a forecast for October 2024 of the 2-meter temperature anomaly in degrees Celsius, based on 1984-2009 model climatology. The anomalies are forecast to be very high for the Arctic Ocean.

In the video below, Jennifer Francis is interviewed by Nick Breeze. 

The importance of daily air temperatures, Northern Hemisphere

[ from the Extinction page ]

The situation is dire. The Northern Hemisphere is getting hit hardest by high temperatures, as illustrated by the above image. 

The Northern Hemisphere is home to some 90% of the world population of more than 8 billion people, with much of them living in South-East Asia.

As more people become aware of the dire situation, widespread panic may set in.

People may stop showing up for work, resulting in a rapid loss of the aerosol masking effect, as industries that now co-emit cooling aerosols (such as sulfates) grind to a halt.

Many people may start to collect and burn more wood, resulting in an increase in emissions that speed up the temperature rise.

As temperatures rise, more fires could also break out in forests, peatlands and urban areas including landfills and waste dumps, further contributing to emissions that speed up the temperature rise.

The image on the right illustrates how fast a huge temperature could unfold.

As a somewhat sobering footnote, humans will likely go extinct with a 3°C rise and most life on Earth will disappear with a 5°C rise, as discussed in an earlier post.

Climate Emergency Declaration

The situation is dire and the precautionary principle calls for rapid, comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the situation, as described in this 2022 post, where needed in combination with a Climate Emergency Declaration, as discussed at this group.

Links

• Climate Reanalyzer 
https://climatereanalyzer.org

• Nullschool

https://earth.nullschool.net

• Danish Meteorological Institute - Arctic sea ice volume and thickness
https://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/thk.uk.php

• New Record Ocean Temperatures and Related Climate Indicators in 2023 - by Lijing Checg et al. (2024)

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-024-3378-5

• Cold freshwater lid on North Atlantic
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/cold-freshwater-lid-on-north-atlantic.html

• Extinction

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html

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

• Climate Emergency Declaration
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climate-emergency-declaration.html

Too late to save the climate?

by Andrew Glikson

“Without major action to reduce emissions, global temperature is on track to rise 

by 2.5°C to 4.5°C by 2100” (NASA 2023)

“We Will Not Sign Our Own Death Warrant” (a delegate at COP28)

Whether anything can be done by humans to arrest or reverse global warming and its consequences for the habitability of planet Earth remains an open question, for which neither climate science nor the ignorant hordes of politicians and economists, oblivious to the basic laws of physics, have the answer. However, it is likely that over the next centuries or longer the flow of cold water from the melting of the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets will lead to a transient slowdown of the rate of warming before the large ice sheets are exhausted.

---

Having ignored climate science, dismissed climate scientists and repeatedly confected untruths, while global heating accelerates with deleterious consequences, Homo “sapiens” finds itself on track toward carbon poisoning of the atmosphere, the lungs of the inhabitable Earth, acidification of the hydrosphere and coating of the land with carbon and plastics.

In a new paper, a group of leading climate scientists (Hansen et al., 2023) indicates mean global temperature is currently accelerating toward 2.0°C above pre-industrial temperature by the middle of the decade (Figure 1). The Arctic is warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the world over the last 43 years, on average around 3℃ warmer than it was in 1980. Over the past 30 years Antarctica has been one of the fastest-changing places on Earth, warming more than 3 times faster than the rest of the world.

[ Figure. 1. Global temperature relative to 1880-1920 based on the GISS
(Goddard Institute of Space Studies) analysis - by James Hansen et al., 2023. ]

As the polar regions warm, the tropical climate zones expand and the mid-latitudes, where the most fertile soils are and where the bulk of the population lives, are contracting.

Thus (Figure 2.):

• Agro-climate zones in eastern Europe experienced a northward migration velocity of 100 km per 10 years over the past 40 years.
• Northward migration of climate zones in Europe may be up to two times faster in the next decades.
• Negative impacts of heat stress are expected to non-linearly increase in large parts of southern and southeastern Europe.

[ Figure 2. (a) Agro-climate zonation of Europe based on growing season length (GSL) and active temperature sum (ATS) for the period between 1975 and 1995.The identified agro-climate zones are named as follows (going from north to south): boreal north (BON), boreal south (BOS), nemoral (NEM), continental (CON), Pannonian (PAN), northern maritime (NMA), southern maritime (SMA) and Mediterranean (MED). (b) The migration of agro-climate zones between the 1975–1995 and 1996–2016 periods. For better distinction, only the areas affected by migration of agro-climate zones are displayed (colored areas), while gray color denotes the areas where the agro-climate zones have not changed - Ceglar et al. 2019. ]

A projection by NOAA states: “While we cannot stop global warming overnight, we can slow the rate and limit the amount of global warming by reducing human emissions of heat-trapping gases and soot (“black carbon”). This projection takes neither the amplifying feedback, i.e. from warming of the oceans, melting ice sheets, melting of the permafrost, migrating climate zones, nor the time factor into account.

Factors rendering a potential reversal of global warming in the short term unlikely include:

1. The rise of mean global heating above a level of ~1.5^oC and much higher at the poles above pre-industrial temperatures, polar-ward migration of climate zones, melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, intensification of extreme weather events, requiring major cooling of the Earth, which is unlikely within the time frame of a tribal-conflicted civilization.
   
   
2. Where scientific breakthroughs would allow effective climate mitigation, for example global cooling by CO₂ drawdown, it is questionable whether Homo sapiens ─ recorded by history as an invasive blood-stained tribal species ─ would be able to avoid destroying its home planet.

The apparent absence of radio signals from technological civilizations in the Milky Way may suggest that advanced civilizations tend to undergo self-destruction, consistent with local observations, referred to as the “Fermi Paradox”.

A factor rarely taken into account emerges from the key paper “Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modelling, and modern observations that 2°C global warming could be dangerous”, by Hansen et al. (1996) (Figure 3.).

[ Figure 3. Surface air temperature (°C) relative to 1880-1920 for several scenarios - by James Hansen et al. 2016. ]

Here the flow of cold ice-melt water results in formation of large cold pools in the Atlantic Ocean and Southern Ocean (Figure 3), related to an overall decline in mean global temperatures to -0.33°C by 2096 (Figure 4.) due to the flow of cold ice-melt  water from Greenland and Antarctica.

While the collision between the cold air and water fronts and the tropical war air mass would lead to intense storms over large tracts of Earth, such transient cooling may allow Home "sapiens" a respite from global warming before its home becomes an uninhabitable planet.

[ Figure 4. Surface air temperature (◦C) relative to 1880–1920 in (a) 2065, (b) 2080, and (c) 2096. Top row is IPCC scenario A1B. Ice melt with 10-year doubling is added in other scenarios - James Hansen et al. 2016. ]

A/Prof. Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist

Andrew Glikson

Books:

The Asteroid Impact Connection of Planetary Evolution
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400763272
The Archaean: Geological and Geochemical Windows into the Early Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319079073
The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319572369
The Event Horizon: Homo Prometheus and the Climate Catastrophe
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030547332
Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319225111
Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropocene Climate Event Horizon
https://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
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319745442
The Fatal Species: From Warlike Primates to Planetary Mass Extinction
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030754679
The Trials of Gaia. Milestones in the evolution of Earth with reference to the Antropocene
https://www.amazon.com.au/Trials-Gaia-Milestones-Evolution-Anthropocene/dp/3031237080

Climate change terror

The Dubai’s COP-out denial conference

- by Andrew Glikson -

The issue, betrayed, is nothing more and nothing less than the future of a multitude of species on Earth, including Homo sapiens.

Global temperature (relative to 1880-1920 mean for each month) for the 1997-98, 2015-16 and 2023-24
El Ninos. The impact of El Nino on global temperature usually peaks early in the year (El Nino Peak
Year) following the year in which the El Nino originated. Credit: James Hansen et al. (Oct. 2023)
Figure 1. Comparative El-Nino trends 1997, 1998, 2015, 2016, 2023 relative to 1880-1920.

As confirmed by the acceleration of climate extremes, consistent with the prediction by Wallace Broecker, the authoritative climate scientist, global climate change is racing beyond tipping points (Figure 1), yet the evidence continues to be denied, including in the recent COP-28 climate conference, where climate scientists are almost nowhere to be seen.

Figure 2a. Based on NOAA’s temperature data Earth’s temperature rose by an average of 0.08° C per decade since 1880; Since 1981 the warming rate is 0.18° C per decade. The 2022 surface temperature was 0.86 °C warmer than the 20th-century average of 13.9 °C and 1.06 ˚C warmer than the pre-industrial period (1880-1900). The 10 warmest years in the historical record have all occurred since 2010.

As temperatures rise (Figure 2a), fires engulf large tracts of land, storms intensity and sea levels rise (Figure 2b), the living Earth is entering a critical stage. Having ignored the existential threat of climate change, extreme nationalism and fascism ─ the ideology of death ─ spill rivers of blood in many parts of the world.

Figure 2b. Accelerated sea level rise after Church and White, 2011 and University of Hawaii (Fast Delivery). Values in millimetres compared to the 1993-2008 average. NOAA. University of Hawaii Sea Level Centre

While the powers that be ─ politicians, CEOs, top-bureaucrats, economists and their media mouthpieces ─ proceed to propagate dangerous lies, such as the denial of climate change at the heart of the Dubai COP-28 conference.

A principal lie is that, in itself, the application of clean technologies ─ solar, wind, tide, hydrogen, may be sufficient to arrest global warming. Likewise, ignoring the export of fossil fuels in national carbon inventories, despite the dissemination of greenhouse gas emissions world-wide.

Major climate untruths propagated by governments, fossil fuel corporations and their subservient media include proposed limits on domestic emissions which are meaningless to the arrest of global warming since with continuing mining, export and combustion of fossil fuels, greenhouse gases disperse through the atmosphere regardless of where the fossil fuel is mined or burnt.

With CO₂ level reaching 418.51 ppm at a rate of ~2.5 ppm/year and methane CH₄ level reaching 1917.1 ppb at a rate of near-12 ppb per year, greenhouse gas rises are exceeding any in recent geological history, representing the most severe atmospheric crisis since the asteroid impact which killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Oblivious to the physical laws on which climate science is based and to the time factor of the impending climate crisis, setting artificial targets such as “1.5°C by 2030” or “2°C by 2050”, the powers-to-be may not be aware of what life on planet Earth is facing.

Australia is the world’s third biggest exporter and fifth biggest miner of fossil fuels by CO₂ potential. hydrocarbon exports, following Russia and Saudi Arabia. “The government denies responsibility for emissions created by the vast amounts of coal and gas Australia exports overseas as one of the world’s largest fossil fuel producers, and has flatly ruled out any discussion on banning new fossil fuel projects” (McNeill, 2022).

While ongoing combustion of fossil fuels is raising greenhouse gas concentration at a rate unprecedented in the geological record, global heating being a self-amplifying process, the utilization of clean energy: solar, wind, hydropower and thermal power cannot by itself stem global warming, now rising above 420 ppm CO₂, well above the 180-280 ppm range of the preceding glacial-interglacial cycles. Such a high CO₂ level compared to that which existed in the Miocene before 5.3 million years ago when mean global temperature was about ~18.4°C, rising at a rate to which much of the fauna and flora can hardly adjust.

Nowadays as bombs keep falling, heads of governments jet around the world genuflecting to each other, signing arms deals, uttering honey words, while the corporate media discusses their official dinner menus, no solutions are reached for the worsening humanitarian crises nor the future on an uninhabitable Earth.

A/Prof. Andrew Y Glikson
Earth and Paleo-climate scientist

Andrew Glikson

Books:
The Asteroid Impact Connection of Planetary Evolution
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789400763272
The Archaean: Geological and Geochemical Windows into the Early Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319079073
The Plutocene: Blueprints for a Post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319572369
The Event Horizon: Homo Prometheus and the Climate Catastrophe
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030547332
Climate, Fire and Human Evolution: The Deep Time Dimensions of the Anthropocene
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319225111
Evolution of the Atmosphere, Fire and the Anthropocene Climate Event Horizon
https://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
https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319745442
The Fatal Species: From Warlike Primates to Planetary Mass Extinction
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030754679
The Trials of Gaia. Milestones in the evolution of Earth with reference to the Antropocene
https://www.amazon.com.au/Trials-Gaia-Milestones-Evolution-Anthropocene/dp/3031237080

Will temperatures keep rising fast?

[ discussed at facebook - click on images to enlarge ]

The above image, created with Climate Reanalyzer data, shows the temperature anomaly (in °C) compared to the 1979-2000 mean. In blue are the years 1979-2022 and in black and white is the year 2023 through December 3, 2023. A trend is added in pink and white, based on 2023 data. Note that the 1979-2000 mean isn't pre-industrial, the anomaly from pre-industrial is significantly higher.

[ click on images to enlarge ]

The trend warns that temperatures could keep rising rapidly over the next few months. A number of things can contribute to such a rapid rise:

• The chance that the current El Niño will slow down over the next few months is minimal, as illustrated by the IRI image on the right.
  
  
• Earth's radiation imbalance is very high, as illustrated by the NASA image below.

• Antarctic sea ice extent is at record low for the time of year, as illustrated by the NSIDC image below, and the fall in extent is particularly steep in December. Sea ice loss results in less sunlight getting reflected back into space and instead getting absorbed by the ocean and the impact of Antarctic sea ice loss is even stronger than Arctic sea ice loss, as Antarctic sea ice is located closer to the Equator, as pointed out by Paul Beckwith in a video in an earlier post. A warmer Southern Ocean also comes with fewer bright clouds, further reducing albedo, as discussed here and here. For decades, there still were many lower clouds over the Southern Ocean, reflecting much sunlight back into space, but these lower clouds have been decreasing over time, further speeding up the amount of sunlight getting absorbed by the water of the Southern Ocean, and this 'pattern effect' could make a huge difference globally, as this study points out. Emissivity is a further factor; open oceans are less efficient than sea ice when it comes to emitting in the far-infrared region of the spectrum (feedback #23 on the feedbacks page).

• There is a huge danger that ocean heat will reach and destabilize methane hydrates that are contained in sediments at the seafloor of oceans, resulting in massive methane eruptions, as discussed in many earlier posts such as this one.


• Emissions are high and rising. On December 6, 2023, CO₂ was 420.16 ppm at Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Today’s greenhouse gas forcing of 4.6 W/m² is relative to mid-Holocene CO₂ of 260 ppm, i.e. the natural Holocene CO₂ level. Equilibrium global warming for today’s amount of greenhouse gases is 10°C, which is reduced to 8°C by today’s human-made aerosols. Warming in the past 6000 years was slowed down by aerosol cooling. Growing population, agriculture and land clearance produced aerosols and CO₂; wood was the main fuel for cooking and heating. Nonlinear aerosol forcing is largest in a pristine atmosphere. Impacts on people and nature will accelerate as global warming increases hydrologic (weather) extremes. The enormity of consequences demands a return to Holocene-level global temperature. (from: Global warming in the pipeline, by James Hansen et al.)

Rises in methane can cause rapid warming. The image below, created with a Copernicus forecast for December 6, 2023 03 UTC, shows very high methane levels at higher latitudes north at 500 hPa.

• 

  [ image from a 2014 post ]

  Meanwhile, as emissions keep rising, politicians refuse to act, preferring to debate the size of the "carbon budget". Sadly, the IPCC lends credibility to the idea that there was a "budget" to be divided among polluters, a "budget" that would enable polluters to keep polluting for decades to come. This adds a false sense of accountability to this "budget", as if it was checked and verified by scientists across the world. Instead, there is just a huge carbon debt that has to be removed from the atmosphere and the oceans.
  
  

• 

  [ image from the Extinction page ]

  As more people become aware of the dire situation, widespread panic can set in, as warned about in this 2007 post. Instead of crossing a social tipping point that prompts people into action to combat the temperature rise, panic may set in that stops many people from showing up at work, resulting in a rapid loss of the aerosol masking effect, as industries that now co-emit cooling aerosols (such as sulfates) grind to a halt. People may start to collect and burn more wood, resulting in an increase in emissions that speed up the temperature rise. As temperatures rise, more fires could also break out in forests, peatlands and urban areas including landfills and waste dumps, further contributing to emissions that speed up the temperature rise. 

As said, the 1979-2000 base used in the image at the top is not pre-industrial. Anomalies would be much higher when using a genuinely pre-industrial base. The image on the right uses a 2.29°C 2020 anomaly from 3480 BC.

The image on the right shows many elements that could jointly cause a rapid temperature rise of more than 10°C, in the process causing the clouds tipping point to get crossed that on its own can push up the temperature rise by a further 8°C.

Much of this is described at the extinction page.

Conclusion

The precautionary principle calls for comprehensive and effective action to reduce the damage and to improve the situation as described in this 2022 post, in line with recognition of the climate emergency we're in.


Links

• Climate Reanalyzer
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/?dm_id=world

• Columbia Climate School, International Research Institute for Climate and Society

https://iri.columbia.edu/our-expertise/climate/forecasts/enso/current/?enso_tab=enso-cpc_plume

• NASA - Earth's Radiation Balance

https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/5173

• National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)

https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph

• Global warming in the pipeline, by James Hansen et al. 
https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/3/1/kgad008/7335889

• Copernicus - Methane forecasts
https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/charts/packages/cams/products/methane-forecasts

• The Clouds Feedback and the Clouds Tipping Point
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/clouds-feedback.html

• Extinction
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html

• Pre-industrial
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/pre-industrial.html

• Transforming Society
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2022/10/transforming-society.html

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

• Climate Emergency Declaration
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/climate-emergency-declaration.html