September 2020 was the warmest September in the NASA record that goes back to 1880. In the image, September 2020 temperatures are compared to 1951-1980.
Global warming is accelerating
Similarly, Copernicus reports that September 2020 global surface air temperature was the highest September temperature on record. The image below shows temperatures averaged over the twelve-month period from October 2019 to September 2020.
Keep in mind that anomalies in the NASA image are compared to 1951-1980, while in the Copernicus image, anomalies are compared to the 1981-2010 average. Anomalies are even higher when compared to pre-industrial levels, as discussed further below.
The Copernicus 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 warming is accelerating, because the peak around 2016 was reached under El Niño conditions, whereas current temperatures are reached under La Niña conditions and while sunspots are at a low, both of which are suppressing temperatures, as discussed in a recent post.
What causes this acceleration of the temperature rise?
James Hansen and Makiko Sato confirm that global warming is accelerating and they explore whether this acceleration could be caused by fast feedbacks and short-term natural variability such as the sunspot solar cycle, which they give an amplitude of some 0.25 W/m². James Hansen and Makiko Sato conclude that global warming is accelerating due to a less negative atmospheric aerosol forcing.
Indeed, sunspots cannot explain this acceleration, because we're currently in a sunspot low.
[ see also earlier post ] |
[ from earlier post ] |
This analysis, discussed in a recent post, found some variation in intensity between forecasts, adding images including the one on the right, which is based on linear regression and suggests that the Solar Cycle 25 may be higher than the previous Solar Cycle 24.
The international treaty banning nuclear weapons has now been ratified by 50 countries and the treaty will come into force on 22 January 2021, making it illegal to stockpile, produce and use nuclear weapons from January 22, 2021.
The treaty complements the Paris Agreement, the Montreal Protocol and further international agreements that politicians should abide by.
Clean, renewable energy - key to world peace
In the year 1900, there were more electric cars on U.S. roads than gasoline cars. Solar panels were used on a satellite, launched by the US back in 1958. William Thomson proposed using heat pumps for space heating in 1852. The first electricity-generating wind turbine was invented in 1888 in Cleveland, Ohio by Charles Brush.
What has been holding up the innovation in clean, renewable energy technologies such as batteries, solar panels, wind turbines and heat pumps? What stood in the way was the disastrous turn that history took into fossil fuel and nuclear power. Historically, fossil fuel has been a source of conflict that blocked the road to progress. The key to progress and world peace is a rapid transition to clean, renewable energy.
Fossil fuel and control over its supply is behind much of the conflict and violence, as well as pollution that has infested the world for more than a century. Instead of continuing to use fossil fuel, the world must rapidly transition to the use wind turbines, geothermal power, solar power, wave power, and similar ways to generate clean, renewable energy, in combination with hydrogen and batteries and other ways to store energy.
Abundance of local clean, renewable energy
This transition to clean, renewable energy will remove much cause for conflict. Clean, renewable energy is available in abundance LOCALLY around the world (unlike fossil fuel) and the use of clean, renewable energy in one place doesn't exclude use of clean, renewable energy elsewhere.
Clean, renewable energy's numerous benefits
This transition also comes with greater energy security and reliability, next to its numerous further benefits, e.g. it will make more land and water available for growing food and it will generate better and more jobs and investment opportunities, and improve our health, in addition to the reductions in greenhouse gases that come with this transition.
Clean, renewable energy is also cheaper
Importantly, it is also more economic to use clean, renewable energy, so the transition will more than pay for itself as we go. The more prices of solar panels, batteries, heat pumps, etc. keep falling, and the more urgency there is to act on climate change, the more sense it makes to transition to clean, renewable energy as soon as possible. Innovation has resulted in a huge drop in the cost of generating and storing clean, renewable electricity. In the Lazard 2019 analysis of the cost of energy and storage, the unsubsidized cost of solar PV (thin film utility scale) was $US32-42/MWh, i.e. already lower than the cost of fossil fuel and nuclear, which ranged from $US44-199/MWh (see image). A recent tender for solar panels in Portugal received an offer equivalent to a price of $US13/MWh.
Aerosols
The danger is that a rapid and steep temperature rise will be triggered by a combination of elements such as El Niño, sunspots, oceans taking up less heat and changes to aerosols such as further sulfate cooling loss.
[ from earlier post ] |
[ from earlier post ] |
These high temperature anomalies reflect overheating of the Arctic Ocean with the sea ice no longer acting as a buffer to consume heat.
Meanwhile, the temperature of the ocean on the Northern Hemisphere keeps increasing, as illustrated by the image below, from an earlier post.
As the Arctic warms up faster than the rest of the world, the temperature difference between the North Pole and the Equator narrows, making the jet stream wavier, thus enabling warm air over the Pacific Arctic to move more easily into the Arctic, as discussed in many earlier posts such as this one, which featured a forecast for March 31, 2019, with a temperature anomaly for the Arctic of 7.7°C or 13.86°F and local anomalies approaching 30°C or 54°F higher than 1979-2000.
So, the odds are increasing that very high temperatures will hit the Arctic at the start of the melting season, further increasing the threat of destabilization of methane hydrates contained in sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.
Where did such high levels originate? The animation shows areas solidly magenta-colored and indicating high methane levels to first appear over the East Siberian Arctic Shelf close to sea level, and to grow larger and cover more of the Arctic Ocean at higher altitudes.
[ from earlier post ] |
Over the poles, the Troposphere doesn't reach the heights it does over the tropics. At higher altitudes, methane will follow the Tropopause, i.e. the methane will rise in altitude while moving closer to the Equator.
Methane rises from the Arctic Ocean concentrated in plumes, pushing away the aerosols and gases that slow down the rise of methane elsewhere, which enables methane erupting from the Arctic Ocean to rise straight up fast and reach the stratosphere. Since little hydroxyl is present in the atmosphere over the Arctic, it is much harder for this methane to be broken down.
What further makes the rise of methane at these high altitudes very worrying is that once methane does reach the stratosphere, it can remain there for a long time. The IPCC in 2013 (AR5) gave methane a lifetime of 12.4 years. The IPCC in 2001 (TAR) gave stratospheric methane a lifetime of 120 years, adding that less than 7% of methane did reach the stratosphere.
The situation is dire and calls for immediate, comprehensive and effective action, as described in the Climate Plan.
Links
• Copernicus - Surface air temperature for September 2020
https://climate.copernicus.eu/surface-air-temperature-september-2020
• NASA - Temperature anomalies September 2020
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/maps/index.html
• September 2020 Global Temperature Update - by James Hansen
http://www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/Temperature/Emails/September2020.pdf
• Accelerated Global Warming (14 October 2020) - by James Hansen and Makiko Sato
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2020/20201014_AcceleratedWarming.pdf
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/202009/supplemental/page-4
• ENSO: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions - NOAA, October 12, 2020
https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/enso_evolution-status-fcsts-web.pdf
• Danish Meteorological Institute - Arctic temperature
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php
• Climate reanalyzer
https://climatereanalyzer.org
• Cryospherecomputing - by Nico Sun
• Arctic sea ice extent - Vishop, Arctic Data archive System, National Institute of Polar Research, Japan
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent
• Portugal’s second solar PV tender sets new world record low price
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019
https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2020-10-24/un-secretary-generals-spokesman-the-occasion-of-the-50th-ratification-of-the-treaty-the-prohibition-of-nuclear-weapons
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2020/09/temperatures-threaten-to-become-unbearable.html
• Methane Hydrates Tipping Point threatens to get crossed
• 2020 Siberian Heatwave continues
• Arctic Warming Up Fast
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/03/arctic-warming-up-fast.html
• 10°C or 18°F warmer by 2021?
• A Global Temperature Rise Of More than Ten Degrees Celsius By 2026?
• When will we die?
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/06/when-will-we-die.html
• Feedbacks in the Arctic