Arctic News

Friday, January 15, 2021

2020: Hottest Year On Record

NASA data show that 2020 was the hottest year on record.

The image below shows that high temperature in 2020 hit Siberia and the Arctic Ocean.

In above images, the temperature anomaly is compared to 1951-1980, NASA's default baseline. When using an earlier baseline, the data need to be adjusted. The image below shows a trendline pointing at an 0.31°C adjustment for a 1900 baseline.

Additional adjustment is needed when using a 1750 baseline, while it also makes sense to add further adjustment for higher polar anomalies and for air temperatures over oceans, rather than sea surface water temperatures. In total, a 0.78°C adjustment seems appropriate, as has been applied before, such as in this analysis. For the year 2020, this translates in a temperature rise of 1.8029°C versus the year 1750.

Three trends: blue, purple and red

Will the global temperature rise to 3°C above 1750 by 2026? The blue trend below is based on 1880-2020 NASA Land+Ocean data and adjusted by 0.78°C to reflect a 1750 baseline, ocean air temperatures and higher polar anomalies, and it crosses a 3°C rise in 2026.

The trend shows a temperature for 2020 that is slightly higher than indicated by the data. This is in line with the fact that we're currently in a La Niña period and that we're also at a low point in the sunspot cycle, as discussed in an earlier post. The blue trend also shows that the 1.5°C treshold was already crossed even before the Paris Agreement was accepted.

The second (purple) trend is based on a shorter period, i.e. 2006-2020 NASA land+ocean (LOTI) data, again adjusted by 0.78°C to reflect a 1750 baseline, ocean air temperatures and higher polar anomalies. The trend approaches 10°C above 1750 by 2026. The trend is based on 15 years of data, making it span a 30-year period centered around end 2020 when extended into the future for a similar 15 year period. The trend approaches 10°C above 1750 in 2026.

The trend is displayed on the backdrop of an image from an earlier post, showing how a 10°C rise could eventuate by 2026 when adding up the impact of warming elements and their interaction.

The stacked bars are somewhat higher than the trend. Keep in mind that the stacked bars are for the month February, when anomalies can be significantly higher than the annual average.

Temperature rise for February 2016 versus 1900.

In the NASA image on the right, the February 2016 temperature was 1.70°C above 1900 (i.e. 1885-1914). In the stacked-bar analysis, the February 2016 rise from 1900 was conservately given a value of 1.62°C, which was extended into the future, while an additional 0.3°C was added for temperature rise from pre-industrial to 1900.

Later analyses such as this one also added a further 0.2°C to the temperature rise, to reflect ocean air temperatures (rather than water temperatures) and higher polar anomalies (note the grey areas on the image in the right).

Anyway, the image shows two types of analysis on top of each other, one analysis based on trend analysis and another analysis based on a model using high values for the various warming elements. The stacked-bar analysis actually doesn't reflect the worst-case scenario, an even faster rise is illustrated by the next trend, the red line.

The third (red) trend suggests that we may have crossed the 2°C treshold in the year 2020. The trend is based on a recent period (2009-2020) of the NASA land+ocean data, again adjusted by 0.78°C to reflect a 1750 baseline, ocean air temperatures and higher polar anomalies.

Where do we go from here?

It's important to acknowledge the danger of acceleration of the temperature rise over the next few years. The threat is illustrated by the image below and shows up most prominently in the red trend.

Of the three trends, the red trend is based on the shortest period, and it does indicate that we have aready crossed the 2°C treshold and we could be facing an even steeper temperature rise over the next few years.

We're in a La Niña period and we're also at a low point in the sunspot cycle. This suppresses the temperature somewhat, so the 2020 temperature should actually be adjusted upward to compensate for such variables. Importantly, while such variables do show up more when basing trends on shorter periods, the data have not be adjusted for this in this case, so the situation could actually be even worse.

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

Dangerous acceleration of the temperature rise

There are many potential causes behind the acceleration of the temperature rise, such as the fact that the strongest impact of carbon dioxide is felt ten years after emission, so we are yet to experience the full wrath of the carbon dioxide emitted over the past decade. However, this doesn't explain why 2020 turned out to be the hottest year on record, as opposed to - say - 2019, given that in 2020 carbon dioxide emissions were 7% lower than in 2019.

James Hansen confirms that the temperature rise is accelerating, and he points at aerosols as the cause. However, most cooling aerosols come from industries such as smelters and coal-fired power plants that have hardly reduced their operations in 2020, as illustrated by the image below, from the aerosols page.

Above image shows that on December 17, 2020, at 10:00 UTC, sulfate aerosols (SO₄) were as high as 6.396 τ at the green circle. Wind on the image is measured at 850 hPa.

Could the land sink be decreasing? A recent study shows that the mean temperature of the warmest quarter (3-month period) passed the thermal maximum for photosynthesis during the past decade. At higher temperatures, respiration rates continue to rise in contrast to sharply declining rates of photosynthesis. Under business-as-usual emissions, this divergence elicits a near halving of the land sink strength by as early as 2040. While this is a frightening prospect, it still doesn't explain why 2020 turned out to be the hottest year on record.

Oceans are taking up less heat, thus leaving more heat in the atmosphere. The danger is illustrated by the image below.

The white band around -60° (South) indicates that the Southern Ocean has not yet caught up with global warming, featuring low-level clouds that reflect sunlight back into space. Over time, the low clouds will decrease, which will allow more sunlight to be absorbed by Earth and give the world additional warming. A recent study finds that, after this 'pattern effect' is accounted for, committed global warming at present-day forcing rises by 0.7°C. While this is very worrying, it still doesn't explain why 2020 turned out to be the hottest year on record.

Ocean stratification contributes to further surface warming, concludes another recent study:

"The stronger ocean warming within upper layers versus deep water has caused an increase of ocean stratification in the past half century. With increased stratification, heat from climate warming less effectively penetrates into the deep ocean, which contributes to further surface warming. It also reduces the capability of the ocean to store carbon, exacerbating global surface warming. Furthermore, climate warming prevents the vertical exchanges of nutrients and oxygen, thus impacting the food supply of whole marine ecosystems."

"By uptaking ~90% of anthropogenic heat and ~30% of the carbon emissions, the ocean buffers global warming. [The] ocean has already absorbed an immense amount of heat, and will continue to absorb excess energy in the Earth’s system until atmospheric carbon levels are significantly lowered. In other words, the excess heat already in the ocean, and heat likely to enter the ocean in the coming years, will continue to affect weather patterns, sea level, and ocean biota for some time, even under zero carbon emission conditions."

Many feedbacks are starting to kick in with greater ferocity, with tipping points threatening to get crossed or already crossed, such as the latent heat tipping point, i.e. loss of the ocean heat buffer, as Arctic sea ice keeps getting thinner. As the above map also shows, the temperature rise is hitting the Arctic Ocean particularly hard. At least ten tipping points are affecting the Arctic, including the latent heat tipping point and the methane hydrates tipping point, as illustrated by the image below.

[ from an earlier post ]

A combination of higher temperatures and the resulting feedbacks such as stronger ocean stratification, stronger wind, decline of Arctic snow and ice and a distorted Jet Stream is threatening to cause formation of a lid at the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean that enables more heat to move to the Arctic Ocean. This could cause huge amounts of methane to erupt from the seafloor, thus contributing to cause the 1,200 ppm CO₂e cloud tipping point to get crossed, resulting in an extra 8°C rise, as an earlier post and a recent post warned.

Dangerous acceleration of the temperature rise

The danger is that methane is erupting in the Arctic from the seafloor and that this increasingly contributes to methane reaching the stratosphere.

While methane initially is very potent in heating up the atmosphere, it is generally broken down relatively quickly, but in the atmosphere over the Arctic, there is very little hydroxyl to break down the methane.

Methane also persists much longer in the stratosphere, which contributes to its accumulation there.

Large amounts of methane may already be erupting from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, rising rapidly and even reaching the stratosphere.

This danger is getting little public attention. The NOAA image on the right shows the globally-averaged, monthly mean atmospheric methane abundance derived from measurements from marine surface sites. Measurements that are taken at sea level do not reflect methane very well that is rising up from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean, especially where the methane rises up high in plumes.

Satellite measurements better reflect the danger. The image on the right shows that the MetOp-1 satellite recorded peak methane levels as high as 2715 ppb at 469 mb on the morning of January 6, 2021.

Most of the high (magenta-colored) levels of methane are located over oceans and a lot of them over the Arctic Ocean.

The next image on the right shows the situation closer to sea level, at 586 mb, where even less of the high levels of methane show up over land, indicating that the methane originated from the seafloor.

The third image on the righ shows the situation even closer to sea level, at 742 mb, and almost all high levels of methane show up over the Arctic Ocean and over areas where the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean border on the Arctic.

Because methane is lighter than air and much lighter than water, methane erupting from the seafloor will quickly rise up vertically. While much of the methane that is released from the seabed can get broken down in the water by microbes, methane that is rising rapidly and highly concentrated in the form of plumes will leave little opportunity for microbes to break it down in the water column, especially where waters are shallow,
as is the case in much of the Arctic Ocean.

As methane hydrates destabilize, methane will erupt with an explosive force, since methane is highly compressed inside the hydrate (1 m³ of methane hydrate can release 160 m³ of gas). Such eruptions can destabilize further hydrates located nearby. Because of this explosive force, plumes of methane can rise at high speed through the water column.

Because methane is so much lighter than water, large methane releases from the seafloor will form larger bubbles that merge and stick together, developing more thrust as they rise through the water.

Because of this thrust, methane plumes will keep rising rapidly after entering the atmosphere, and the plumes will more easily push away aerosols and gases that slow down the rise in the air of methane elsewhere, such as where methane is emitted by cows.

A further image of another satellite is added on the right. The N2O satellite recorded methane levels as high as 2817 ppb at 487 mb on the morning of January 10, 2021.

Such sudden and very high peaks can hardly be caused by agriculture or wetlands, but instead they are likely caused by destabilization of methane hydrates in sediments at the seafloor.

Further contributing to the danger is the fact that little hydroxyl is present in the atmosphere over the Arctic, so it is much harder for this methane to get broken down in the air over the Arctic, compared to methane emissions elsewhere.

Finally, the edge of the stratosphere is much lower over the Arctic, as discussed in an earlier post.

All this makes that methane that is erupting from the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean is more prone to accumulate in the stratosphere. Once methane is in the stratosphere, it's unlikely that it will come back into the troposphere.

The IPCC AR5 (2013) gave methane a lifetime of 12.4 years. The IPCC TAR (2001) gave stratospheric methane a lifetime of 120 years, adding that less than 7% of methane did reach the stratosphere at the time. According to IPCC AR5, of the methane that gets broken down by hydroxyl in the atmosphere, some 8.5% got broken down in the stratosphere.

Conclusions

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

In the video below, Paul Beckwith discusses the situation:

For another perspective, Guy McPherson discusses the situation in the video below, Edge of Extinction: Maybe I’m Wrong.

Links

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

• NASA Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp

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

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

• Temperatures keep rising
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2020/12/temperatures-keep-rising.html

• There is no time to lose
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2020/11/there-is-no-time-to-lose.html

• Possible climate transitions from breakup of stratocumulus decks under greenhouse warming, by Tapio Schneider et al. (2019)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-019-0310-1

• A rise of 18°C or 32.4°F by 2026?

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-rise-of-18c-or-324f-by-2026.html

• Most Important Message Ever
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2019/07/most-important-message-ever.html

• 2°C crossed
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2020/03/2c-crossed.html

• Crossing the Paris Agreement thresholds
https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/crossing.html

• Global Warming Acceleration - by James Hansen and Makiko Sato
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2020/20201214_GlobalWarmingAcceleration.pdf

• Paying for emissions we’ve already released
https://www.llnl.gov/news/paying-emissions-weve-already-released

• Greater committed warming after accounting for the pattern effect - by Chen Zhou et al.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-00955-x

• Upper Ocean Temperatures Hit Record High in 2020 - by Lijing Cheng et al.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00376-021-0447-x

• How close are we to the temperature tipping point of the terrestrial biosphere? - by Katharyn Duffy et al.
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/3/eaay1052

• Methane hydrates tipping point threatens to get crossed

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2020/08/methane-hydrates-tipping-point-threatens-to-get-crossed.html

• Temperatures threaten to become unbearable

https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2020/09/temperatures-threaten-to-become-unbearable.html

• Cold freshwater lid on North Atlantic

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

• Aerosols

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

• NOAA - Trends in Atmospheric Methane
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends_ch4

• COVID-19 lockdown causes unprecedented drop in global CO2 emissions in 2020 - Gobal Carbon Project

https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/20/files/International_FutureEarth_GCB2020.pdf

• Global Average Temperatures in 2020 Reached a RECORD HIGH of 1.55 C above PreIndustrial in 1750 - by Paul Beckwith
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0lgTAEUYyA

• Edge of Extinction: Maybe I’m Wrong - by Guy McPherson
https://guymcpherson.com/2021/01/edge-of-extinction-maybe-im-wrong

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

Tuesday, December 22, 2020

An Orwellian climate while Rome burns

by Andrew Glikson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Glikson

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

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

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Temperatures keep rising

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

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

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

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

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

Future rise?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

air + ERSST v5 sea-surface water temperature

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ from an earlier post ]

Huge temperature rise

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

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

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

[ from an earlier post ]

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

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

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

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

Links

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• U.N. Emissions Gap Report 2020

Sunday, December 13, 2020

The myth of “net zero emissions by 2050”

by Andrew Glikson

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

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

This is because:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Glikson

Friday, December 4, 2020

Polar-ward climate zones shift and consequent tipping points

by Andrew Glikson

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

Figure 1. Climate tipping points (McSweeney 2020)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here I list some of these likely relationships:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A global imperative.

Andrew Glikson