Arctic News

Thursday, December 15, 2022

Antarctic sea ice in rapid decline

Earlier this year, on February 25, Antarctic sea ice extent was at an all-time record low of 1.924 million km², as the above image shows. Throughout the year, Antarctic sea ice extent has been low. On December 14, 2022, Antarctic sea ice was merely 9.864 million km² in extent. Only in 2016 was Antarctic sea ice extent lower at that time of year, and - importantly - 2016 was a strong El Niño year.

The NOAA image on the right indicates that, while we're still in the depths of a persistent La Niña, the next El Niño looks set to strike soon.

Meanwhile, ocean heat content keeps rising due to high levels of greenhouse gases, as illustrated by the image on the right.

Rising ocean heat causes sea ice to melt from below, resulting in less sea ice, which in turn means that less sunlight gets reflected back into space and more sunlight gets absorbed as heat in the ocean, making it a self-reinforcing feedback loop that further speeds up sea ice loss.

The currently very rapid decline in sea ice concentration around Antarctica is illustrated by the animation of Climate Reanalyzer images on the right, showing Antarctic sea ice on November 16, November 29 and December 15, 2022.

In 2012, a research team led by Jemma Wadham studied Antarctica, concluding that an amount of 21,000 Gt or billion tonnes or petagram (1Pg equals 10¹⁵g) of organic carbon is buried beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet, as discussed in an earlier post.

The potential amount of methane hydrate and free methane gas beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet could be up to 400 billion tonnes.

The predicted shallow depth of these potential reserves also makes them more susceptible to climate forcing than other methane hydrate reserves on Earth, describes the news release.

“We are sleepwalking into a catastrophe for humanity. We need to take notice right now. It is already happening. This is not a wait-and-see situation anymore," Jemma Wadham said more recently.

The animation on the right shows the thickness of Antarctic sea ice up to December 14, 2022, with 8 days of forecasts added.

On December 29, 2022, Antarctic sea ice extent was at a record low for the time of the year, at 5.527 million km² (see image on the right).

Recently, a study discovered a process that can contribute to the melting of ice shelves in the Antarctic, as discussed at the ArcticNews group.

Ominously, high concentrations of methane have been recorded over Antarctica recently. The image below shows methane as recorded by the Metop-B satellite on November 28, 2022 pm at 399 mb.

Global sea ice extent was also at a record low for the time of year on December 29, 2022, at 17.53 million km², as illustrated by the image below, by the National Institute of Polar Research, Japan.

The situation is dire and the right thing to do now is to help avoid or delay the worst from happening, through action as described in the Climate Plan.

Links

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

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

• NOAA - ocean heat content
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/global-ocean-heat-content/index.html

• Climate Reanalyzer sea ice concentration
https://climatereanalyzer.org/wx/todays-weather/?var_id=seaice-snowc&ortho=7&wt=1

• Naval Research Laboratory - Antarctic sea ice
https://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/GLBhycomcice1-12/antarc.html

• Potential methane reservoirs beneath Antarctica - Press release University of Bristol (2012)
https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2012/8742.html

• Potential methane reservoirs beneath Antarctica - by Jemma Wadham et al. (2012)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11374

• A new frontier in climate change science: connections between ice sheets, carbon and food webs

https://cage.uit.no/2021/05/19/a-new-frontier-for-climate-science-the-evidence-for-glaciers-as-methane-producers-has-exploded-in-recent-years

• Ocean variability beneath Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf driven by the Pine Island Bay Gyre strength - by Tiago Dotto et al.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35499-5

• Metop-B satellite readings

https://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/atmosphere/soundings/heap/iasi/iasiproducts.html

• National Institute of Polar Research, Japan

https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent

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

Sunday, December 11, 2022

Politicians for sale

Are politicians for sale?

How can it be measured whether politicians are for sale and to what extent this occurs?

One measure of how much looters and polluters are buying politicians could be this: How fast is methane accelerating?

Rise in methane and rise in temperature

The rise in methane is vitally important, given methane's potential to rapidly push up temperatures.

Arguably the most important metric related to climate change is surface temperature on land, as illustrated by the image below from an earlier post. The image was created with a July 16, 2022 screenshot from NASA customized analysis plots and shows that the February 2016 (land only) anomaly from 1886-1915 was 2.94°C or 5.292°F.

Extinction

Land-only anomalies are important. After all, most people live on land, where temperatures are rising even faster than they are rising globally, and humans will likely go extinct with a rise of 3°C above pre-industrial, as illustrated by the image below, from an analysis in earlier post.

Note that in the above plot, anomalies are measured versus 1886-1915, which isn't pre-industrial. The image raises questions as to what the temperature rise would look like when using a much earlier base, and how much temperatures could rise over the next few years.

What can be done about it?

The next question is: What can be done about it? To avoid politicians getting bought by looters and polluters, action on climate change is best implemented locally, with Local People's Courts ensuring that implementation is science-based.

Conclusions

The situation is dire and the right thing to do now is to help avoid or delay the worst from happening, through action as described in the Climate Plan and posts at Arctic-news.blogspot.com

Links

• Human Extinction by 2025?

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2022/07/human-extinction-by-2025.html

• NASA customized analysis plots

https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v4/customize.html

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

• Pre-industrial

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

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

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

Monday, December 5, 2022

Arctic Ocean overheating

Arctic sea ice extent was 10.31 million km² on December 4, 2022. At this time of year, extent was smaller only in two years, i.e. in 2016 and 2020, both strong El Niño years. With the next El Niño, Arctic sea ice extent looks set to reach record lows.

The NOAA image on the right indicates that, while we're still in the depths of a persistent La Niña, the next El Niño looks set to strike soon.

The image below shows high sea surface temperature anomalies near the Bering Strait on December 2, 2022, with a "hot blob" in the North Pacific Ocean where sea surface temperature anomalies are reaching as high as 7°C or 12.6°F from 1981-2011. The Jet Stream is stretched out vertically from pole to pole, enabling hot air to enter the Arctic from the Pacific Ocean and from the Atlantic Ocean.

The image below shows a forecast for December 5, 2022, of 2m temperature anomalies versus 1979-2000, with anomalies over parts of the Arctic Ocean near the top end of the scale.

On December 6, 2022, the Arctic was 6.63°C or 11.93°F warmer compared to 1979-2000, as illustrated by the image below.

The image below shows the daily average Arctic air temperature (2m) from 1979 up to December 6, 2022.

Given that we're still in the depth of a persistent La Niña, these currently very high air temperature anomalies indicate that ocean temperatures are very high and that ocean heat is heating up the air over the Arctic.

Additionally, ocean heat is melting the sea ice from below.

Accordingly, Arctic sea ice has barely increased in thickness over the past 30 days, as illustrated by the navy.mil animation on the right.

This leaves only a very short time for Arctic sea ice to grow back in thickness before the melting season starts again, which means that there will be little or no latent heat buffer to consume heat when the melting season starts.

Furthermore, rising temperatures and changes to the Jet Stream contribute to formation of a freshwater lid at the sea surface at higher latitudes, resulting in further heating up of the Arctic Ocean.

As a result, more heat threatens to penetrate sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean that contain vast amounts of methane in hydrates and free gas, and result in abrupt release of huge amounts of methane, dramatically pushing up temperatures globally.

[ The Buffer has gone, feedback #14 on the Feedbacks page ]

The situation is dire and the right thing to do now is to help avoid or delay the worst from happening, through action as described in the Climate Plan.

Links

• Vishop sea ice extent
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/#/extent

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

• nullschool.net
https://earth.nullschool.net

• Climate Reanalyzer
https://climatereanalyzer.org

• Naval Research Laboratory - HYCOM Consortium for Data-Assimilative Ocean Modeling
https://www7320.nrlssc.navy.mil/GLBhycomcice1-12/arctic.html

• Albedo, latent heat, insolation and more

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

• Cold freshwater lid on North Atlantic

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

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

Saturday, November 12, 2022

There is no Carbon Budget

[ Sam Carana: "There is no carbon budget!" ]

In the above image, the atmosphere is presented as a "bucket" filling with greenhouse gas pollution from fossil fuel use from 1870 to 2020. The image depicts the idea that there is some carbon budget left, before 1.5°C above pre-industrial will be reached. The Global Carbon Project has just issued an update of what it refers to as the Global Carbon Budget.

[ adapted from Global Carbon Budget 2022 ]

The Global Carbon Project insists that there still is some carbon budget left, even as global fossil fuel C₂O emissions in 2021 were higher than 2020, and are projected to be higher again in 2022 than 2021, as illustrated by the image on the right.

Arctic-news has long said that the suggestion of a carbon budget is part of a narrative that polluters seek to spread, i.e. that there was some budget left to be divided among polluters, as if polluters could safely continue to pollute for years to come before thresholds would be reached that could make life uncomfortable, such as a rise of 1.5°C above pre-industrial.

For starters, an earlier analysis warns that the 1.5°C threshold may have been crossed long ago. The situation looks set to soon become even more catastrophic. The upcoming El Niño could make a difference of more than 0.5°C over the next few years. Additionally, there will be a growing impact of sunspots, forecast to peak in July 2025.

Arctic-news has long warned about rising temperatures, not only due to high greenhouse gas levels, but also due to a number of events and developments including a rise of up to 1.6°C due to loss of Arctic sea ice and permafrost, and associated changes, a rise of up to 1.9°C due to a decrease in cooling aerosols, and a rise of up to 0.6°C due to an increase in warming aerosols and gases as a result of more biomass and waste burning and forest fires.

More recent posts also warn that the rise could cause the clouds tipping point at 1200 ppm CO₂e to be crossed. Accordingly, the total temperature rise could be as high as 18.44°C from pre-industrial by 2026. Keep in mind that humans are likely to go extinct with a rise of 3°C, as discussed in an earlier post.

[ image from quotes, text from 2013 post ]

So, there is no carbon budget left. There is just a huge amount of carbon to be removed from the atmosphere and oceans, a "debt" that polluters would rather be forgotten or passed on to future generations.

This "debt" has been growing since well before the industrial revolution started. Long ago, people should have started to reduce emissions and remove greenhouse gases, as well as take further action to improve the situation, and Arctic-news has long said that comprehensive and effective action must be taken without delay.

The IPCC has betrayed the very scientific basis it was supposed to reflect

The IPCC keeps insisting that there was a carbon budget, and this goes hand in hand with peddling the notion that the temperature rise was still less than 1.5°C. As discussed in an earlier analysis, the temperature has been rising for thousands of years and may have crossed the 1.5°C mark long ago.

Furthermore, the Paris Agreement instructs the IPCC to specify pathways to limit the rise to 1.5°C. In its arrogance, the IPCC on the one hand keeps insisting that 1.5°C has not been crossed, while on the other hand bluntly refusing to specify credible pathways to keep it that way. The untenability of this attitude is illustrated by a recent UN news release Climate change: No 'credible pathway' to 1.5C limit, UNEP warns.

Many studies point at ways improvements could be facilitated, such as by support for solar panels, wind turbines, heat pumps, biochar, vegan-organic food, air taxis, etc. This analysis and this earlier post agree and also conclude that local feebates work best and that it is preferable for decision-making regarding their implementation to be delegated to local communities. The IPCC on the one hand refuses to contemplate policy instruments, yet on the other hand it keeps peddling pet projects pushed by polluters, such as cap-and-trade, nuclear power, CCS, bioenergy and BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage), as illustrated by the image below.

[ IPCC keeps peddling pet projects pushed by polluters ]

The IPCC keeps downplaying the potential for a huge temperature rise

The IPCC keeps downplaying developments that could lead to a huge temperature rise. Such developments include:

• Rising greenhouse levels due to more emissions by people and collapse of the biosphere, and due to more emissions from forest, peatlands and waste fires;

• Collapse of the cryosphere, including decline of permafrost, glaciers and sea ice loss and latent heat buffer loss resulting in more clouds over the Arctic, more ocean heat moving into the Arctic Ocean and associated seafloor methane releases;

• Loss of cloud reflectivity and the potential for CO₂e levels to cross the clouds tipping point;

• Loss of the aerosol masking effect;

• More water vapor in the atmosphere in line with rising temperatures and as a result from loss of sea ice.

Altogether, these developments have the potential to raise the temperature by 18.44°C from pre-industrial, as discussed at the extinction page.

One of the most harmful ways in which the IPCC has been downplaying the potential for temperatures to rise is by using a too low Global Warming Potential (GWP) for methane.

This is illustrated by the image on the right, from an earlier post. In the IPCC special report Climate Change and Land a GWP for methane is used of 28 over 100 years to assess the impact of AFOLU (agriculture, forestry, and other land use) versus the impact of fossil fuel, etc. The image illustrates the difference in impact when a GWP for methane of 171 over a few years is used instead.

The IPCC seeks to justify its use of a GWP of 28 by focusing on a pulse of methane over 100 years. The impact of such a pulse declines over the years, since the lifetime of methane is only 11.8 years. However, using a pulse to calculate the impact of the total methane in the atmosphere isn't appropriate, because methane doesn't just disappear, but is constantly replenished, or rather is more than replenished, as illustrated by the image further below. Because of this and because of the potentially huge temperature rise within a few years, it makes more sense to calculate the impact of methane over a short period. Over one year, methane's GWP is 200, as discussed at this page. A GWP of 200 is used in the image below (right axis).

[ from earlier post ]

Very threatening is a rise in methane that kept following the trend depicted in the above image, created with WMO 2015-2021 global annual surface mean methane abundances, with an added trend that points at a potential mean global abundance of methane of more than 700 ppm (parts per million) CO₂e by the end of 2026. The image warns that, if such a trend kept continuing, the clouds tipping point could be crossed as a result of the forcing of methane alone.

The above NOAA image shows a methane monthly average for November 2022 of more than 1950 parts per billion (ppb) at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Conclusions

The situation is dire and the right thing to do now is to help avoid or delay the worst from happening, through action as described in the Climate Plan and at the recent post Transforming Society.