The Climate Change of Our Lives: 2020

 Disclaimer:  I am now retired, and am therefore no longer an expert on anything.  This blog post presents only my opinions, and anything in it should not be relied on.

I have written almost nothing for almost all of this year because I have undergone one of those periods where whatever I think of writing seems to me to contribute nothing – someone else has already said what I might wish to say, and done it well.  However, it does seem to me with regard to climate change that, still, no one is consistently monitoring CO2 emissions and drawing conclusions about what they imply for our success or lack thereof in preventing global warming.  So this piece is a retrospective on 2020 and climate change, focusing on what’s going on in CO2 emissions as evidenced by measurements at Mauna Loa.

The 2020 chapter of our lives at Mauna Loa was marked by a pretty consistent monthly atmospheric CO2 rise of 2.5 ppm from 2019’s levels.  This is about in line with the rises of the last two years. 

To me, this is neither good news nor bad news.  I might have expected that the effects of COVID, which over the first ½ of the year apparently meant a 5-8% reduction in global CO2 emissions, would show up in the Mauna Loa figures, but an article on their website noted that it would be difficult to distinguish its effects from the “noise” of normal variation.  Likewise, I might have expected CO2 to increase more rapidly if the pandemic hadn’t happened, simply from feedback effects like increased albedo due to some regions like Siberia and the Laptev Sea melting earlier.  Perhaps the two effects cancelled each other out.

The point, I think, is that for the first year since I started worrying about this in 2010, there seem to be positive developments since the year before that at least match the negative developments.  Of course, we don’t know how much of the clawback of emissions will remain when the pandemic fades some time in 2021, probably due to comprehensive vaccination.  Still, as in Alice Through the Looking Glass, perhaps we are finally running fast enough to stay in the same place, even though we are no closer to the ultimate goal.

Of course, we should not forget those negative developments.  Here’s my own list.

Arctic Sea Ice

Every year I come back to this, because in determining the effects of climate change, what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.  And it was indeed another alarming, unprecedented year.  Both extent and volume of Arctic sea ice at minimum were either slightly lower than ever before or second lowest behind 2012, depending on your measurement.  The salient feature of this melting season was the early and unusually large melt in the Arctic Ocean above Russia, and its late remelt, so that the Northeast Passage was open perhaps from late June to early October.  When refreeze occurred, for the first time since I’ve been following things, it happened “up” from the Russian seacoast rather than “down” from the North Pole to the seacoast.  It appears also that at one point the Northwest Passage was open to quite high in the Canadian Archipelago.

What this suggests to me is that rather than reaching a point of higher stability after 2007 or 2012, two years of precipitous drops, we are now pushing against the lower bounds established in 2012.  In other words, the minimum levels in 2013-2019 do not represent a “new normal”, but rather a springback followed by a resumption of (slow) decline.  I fully expect, therefore, to see a clear new record low sometime in the next 3 years, although I will be deliriously happy to  be wrong.  And I won’t repeat, but you the reader should keep in mind, the fallout when, inevitably, the minimum goes to zero.

Disasters and Weather

Meanwhile, the fires, hurricanes, and other disasters partially attributable to global warming were certainly on a par with 2019.  I am told that the cost of these disasters set another record in 2020.  The wildfires in California were certainly notable for the record acreage consumed and for the effect being so widespread in terms of air quality throughout the state.  2020 saw a record number of hurricanes, true, but to me the important point was the continuation of unusually warm water, especially in the Caribbean, that made incipient hurricanes frequently into Level 4 or 5 ones, when in the years before 2019 those would have almost always been Level 1 or Level 2 hurricanes.  And, of course, record-matching flooding from slow-moving hurricanes happened again, as well.

Locally, it was an unusually mild winter overall, with temperatures in February and early March often in the low 50s, while snow never really stuck.  Then summer arrived with consistent 80-plus temperatures around June 20^th, earlier than I can ever remember in my 50-plus years around the Boston area.  The highs in July and August were around 95, not around 90 as in years before, and temperatures in the 80s lasted until mid-October, while the leaves didn’t finish falling until well into November – all of this was unprecedented as far as I know.  And at certain times, winds were far more violent than in the past, although not to the point of hurricane status.  I understand, also, that there’s a new weather term:  “thundersnow” – i.e., thunder and lightning plus snow.

And the New Year

When I look at 2021, I find that for the first time, the things I foresee that are matters for hope outweigh the negative things that I expect may come to pass, although the hopes are slender:

1.       It does appear that President-elect Joe Biden is serious about embedding consideration of climate change in most of the workings of the U.S. government.  I cannot say that I can clearly point to a comparable effort in any other country, if it happens.  The effects on emissions will be minimal, at best, for a few years.  But the cumulative effect of the bureaucracy and the “movement” it creates as it operates on its own momentum could be profound in the medium term.

2.       For the first time, it appears that banks may actually follow through on defunding CO2 emitters, especially in the energy sector.  Because banks are such herd animals, I view this as a potentially serious investment shift away from CO2 polluter firms that may cause far more drastic CO2 cutbacks (except in China and Russia) than we have seen before.

Bear that in mind as, in 2021, I otherwise anticipate echoing my sad findings about 2020.

Climate Change Mid-2018: The Relatively Good Bad News

Disclaimer:  I am now retired, and am therefore no longer an expert on anything.  This blog post presents only my opinions, and anything in it should not be relied on.

As I have argued before, human metrics on how well we are coping with climate change can be highly misleading, usually on the side of false optimism.  Two metrics that are clearly not thus biased are:

1.       Measurements of atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, which have been recorded since 1959;

2.       Estimates of Arctic sea ice volume (with extent serving as a loose approximation), especially at minimum in September, which have been carried out since the 1980s.

Over the past few years, I have covered the drumbeat of bad news from those two metrics, indicating that we are in a “business as usual” scenario that is accelerating climate change.  In the first half of 2018, what has happened in both cases is that the metrics are not following a “worst possible case” path – hence the “relatively good” part of the title.  At the same time, there is no clearly apparent indication that we are deviating from our “business as usual” scenario – mitigation is not clearly having any effect.  It is possible, however, that we are seeing the beginnings of an effect; it’s just not possible to detect it in the statistical “noise.”  And given that scientists are now talking about a “tipping point” in the near future in which not only a frightening 2 degrees C temperature by 2100 is locked in, but also follow-on feedbacks (like permafrost melt) that take temperature rise eventually to a far more disastrous 3-4 degrees C – well, that’s the underlying, ongoing bad news.

Of course, this summer’s everlasting heat waves in the US, Europe, and the Middle East – heat waves clearly caused primarily by human-generated CO2 emissions and the resulting climate change – make the “new abnormal” obvious to those of us who are not wilfully blind.  But for anyone following the subject with an open mind, the heat waves are not a surprise.  

So let’s take a look at each metric.

The El Nino Effect Recedes

From late 2016 to around June of 2017, the El Nino effect crested, and, as it has done in the past (e.g., 1998) drove both temperatures and the rate of CO2 rise skyward.  Where 2013-2015 saw an unprecedented streak of 3 years of greater than 2 ppm atmospheric CO2 growth, 2016 and 2017 both saw record-breaking growth of around 3 ppm (hiding a brief spurt to almost 4 ppm).  1998 (2.86 ppm) was followed by a year or two of growth around 1 ppm – in fact, slower than 1996-7.  But the percentage rate of rise has also been rising over the years (it reached almost 1% in early 2017, 4 ppm over 404 ppm).  Therefore, it seemed a real possibility that 2018 would see 2.5 ppm growth.  Indeed, we saw 2.5 ppm growth as late as the first month or two of 2018.

Now, however, weekly and monthly growth has settled back to a 1.5-2 ppm rate, consistently since early 1998.  Even a 2 ppm rate gives hope that El Nino did not mean a permanent uptick in the rate of rise.  A 1.5 ppm rate would seem to indicate that 2018 is following the 1999 script – a dip in the rate of rise, possibly because of the follow-on La Nina.  It might even indicate a slight – very slight – decrease in the underlying rate of rise (i.e., the rate of rise with no El Nino or La Nina going on).  And that, as I noted above, is the first indication I have seen that things might possibly be diverging from “business as usual”.  

Of course, there’s always the background of bad news.  In this case, it lies in the fact that whereas ever since I started following CO Mauna Loa 6 or 7 years ago CO2 levels in year 201x were about 10 ppm greater than in year 200x (10 years before), right now CO2 levels are about 13.5 ppm greater than in year 2008.  So, even if the El Nino effect has ended, the underlying amount of rise may still be increasing.  

The best indicator that our efforts are making a difference would be two years of 1 ppm rise or less (CO2 Mauna Loa measures the yearly amount of rise by averaging the Nov.-Feb. monthly rises).  Alas, no such trend has shown up in the data yet.

Arctic Sea Ice:  Not In Stasis, Not in Free Fall

Over the last 2 years, the “new normal” in Arctic sea ice advance and retreat has become apparent.  It involves both unprecedented heat in winter, leading to new low extent maxima, and a cloudy and stormy July and August (key melt months), apparently negating the effects of the winter melt.  However, volume continues to follow a downward overall trend (if far more linear and closer to flat-line than the apparently exponential “free fall” until 2012, which had some predicting “ice-free in 2018”).

As Neven’s Arctic Sea Ice blog (neven1.typepad.com) continues to show, however, “ice-free in September” still appears only a matter of time (at a best guess, according to some statisticians, in the early 2030s).  Subsea temperatures (SSTs) in key parts of the Arctic like above Norway and in the Bering Sea continue to rise and impact sea ice formation in those areas.  As the ice inherited from winter thins, we are beginning to see storms that actually break up the weaker ice into pieces, encouraging increased export of ice to the south via the Fram Strait.  The ice is so thin that a few days ago an icebreaker carrying scientists had to go effectively all the way to the North Pole to find ice thick enough to support their instruments for any length of time.

So the relatively good news is that it appears highly unlikely that this year will see a new low extent, much less an ice-free moment.  The underlying, ongoing bad news is that eventually the rise in SSTs will inevitably overcome the counteracting cloudiness in July and August (and that assumes that the cloudiness will persist).  Since 1980, extent at maximum has shrunk perhaps 12%, while extent at minimum has shrunk perhaps 45% (volume shows sharper decreases).  And in this, unlike CO2 Mauna Loa, there is no trace of a hint that the process is slowing down or reversing due to CO2 emissions reductions.  Nor would we expect there to be such an indication, given that we have only gotten globally serious about emissions reduction in the last 3 years (yes, I recognize that Europe is an exception). 

The Challenge

The question the above analysis raises is:  What will it take to really make a significant impact on our carbon emissions – much less the dramatic reductions scientists have been calling for?  I see no precise answer at the moment.  What I do know is that what we are doing needs to be done even faster, far more extensively – because the last few years have also seen a great increase in understanding on the details of change, as I have tried to show in some of my Reading New Thoughts posts.  The ways are increasingly there; the will is not.  And that, I think, along with countering the disgustingly murderous role of President Trump in particular in climate change (I am thinking of Hurricane Maria and Puerto Rico as an obvious example), should be the main task of the rest of 2018. 

Climate Change 2018: That Was The Year That Wasn't

Disclaimer:  I am now retired, and am therefore no longer an expert on anything.  This blog post presents only my opinions, and anything in it should not be relied on.

We begin our experience of climate change in 2018 with the legacy of 2017, a year that was in many ways the worst so far.  It began with a new US President committed to reversing the minor gains against carbon emissions that the “lead dog” US had already achieved, and with unprecedented off-season Arctic sea ice melting.  It ended with massive out-of-season climate-change-driven wildfires in California, four hurricanes together packing unprecedented force and causing thousands of deaths (Puerto Rico) and close-to-unprecedented physical damage (in dollars), apparent increases in US carbon emissions after 2 years of declines, and unprecedented Arctic warmth in December.  And those are just the lowlights.

In the year since I retired, I have had the chance to read extensively if capriciously in climate change literature, and I hope to share some of those books’ insights with readers in later posts.  Here, I want to briefly note some of the key initial climate change trends of 2018:

·         Atmospheric CO2 continues its relatively rapid pace of increase

·         Arctic sea ice is at a historic low for this time of year, and global sea ice at an all-time low

·         Solar energy cost gains are counteracted by inadequate country emissions pledges and US backsliding

CO2 Increases:  The Broken Record

The important thing to remember about atmospheric CO2 measurements is that they tell us how we are really doing.  You will see all sorts of encouraging (and discouraging) developments that should affect carbon emissions over the course of the year, especially the ones that claim to measure whether global emissions are up or down.  However, global emission measures are flawed by self-reporting and incomplete data, which may increasingly underestimate the emissions.  Atmospheric CO2, measured since 1959 at Mauna Loa in Hawaii, provides not only a measure of overall emissions but also a reality check as to whether our efforts at curbing human and human-related emissions are bearing fruit.

In February 2018, as it seems I have said many times before – so many times that I sound like a broken record – atmospheric CO2 continues to increase at an unprecedented pace, all things considered.  Initial indications are that 2017 CO2 increased by 2.11 ppm, less that the 3 ppm the previous two years.  However, this is a drop of about 0.9 ppm from 2 El Nino years, while the only comparable El Nino year in the past, 1998, saw a drop of about 2 ppm the next year.  Meanwhile, with February ¾ done, the increase for this month appears to be about 2.4 ppm.

The result is that it is almost certain that atmospheric CO2 is about 408 ppm, up 8-9 ppm since 2015.  While this is less than I feared 1 ½ years ago, it still suggests that we will reach 410 ppm some time around the end of this year and 420 ppm in 2022 – and we have already seen the drastic effects of breaching 400 ppm.

Arctic Sea Ice:  What Does Not Stay in the Arctic

For this, the best I can do is quote Joe Romm and Michael Mann (thinkprogress.org/record-arctic-temperatures-85b0c287a78b/):  “2018 has already set a string of records for lowest Arctic sea ice … [but] what happens in the Arctic doesn’t usually stay in the Arctic”  because this low Arctic sea ice weakens and moves the polar vertex (wintertime circular winds around the North Pole), driving relatively cold air south where it impacts both northern America as far south as Florida and northern Eurasia.  So what we are seeing is both extreme cold from this disruption, and extreme warmth when the disruption is not operating (as now, when I am seeing temperatures almost 40 degrees F above normal near Boston).

This is part of a year-round disruption of once-normal Arctic wind patterns leading to “acceleration” of “slowing down of ocean currents, … weather extremes like droughts, wildfires, floods, and superstorms …  [and] faster melting of the land-based Greenland ice sheet, which in turn drives the speed up in sea level rise that scientists reported last week.” 

Nor should we be complacent about Antarctic ice melting.  As noted, Antarctic land ice melt is the key to huge world sea level rise, and melting of Antarctic sea ice that plugs the glaciers conveying land ice to the sea for melting is therefore a prerequisite for huge world sea level rise.  The fact that global (Arctic plus Antarctic) sea ice has reached a record low in the last few weeks indicates that Antarctic sea ice is also at a low point, and last year’s Antarctic sea ice data backs that up.

Solar Vs. Fossil: One Step Forward, Two Half-Steps Back

There is no doubt in my mind that the major encouraging news of the past year has been the driving down of the cost of solar-power generation and installation, to a point well below that of oil, natural gas, and coal.  Moreover, increasingly, despite the lack of adequate solar-battery technology to guarantee no-blackout solar plus wind, the increased production of solar batteries and their lowered cost does make regional almost-no-blackout solar-plus-wind cost-effective for the majority of power in most world regions.  These technological improvements should continue unabated in 2018, and they are now empowered by NGOs, some governments, and entrepreneurs to a surprising extent.

However, a new UN publication assesses the emissions pledges of governments at or since the 2016 Paris conference, and finds that 2030 fossil-fuel emissions will be up in 2030 compared with 1990 if these pledges are fulfilled, while 2050 fossil-fuel emissions will be up in 2050 compared with 2030.   Combined with projected rising population until about 2050 that leads to rising non-fossil-fuel emissions (e.g., cows with methane, deforestation), this pattern of pledges may lock countries more firmly into efforts that are inadequate for a 2 degrees Centigrade goal.  Therefore, like Alice Through the Looking-Glass, we are failing to run fast enough to stay where we are, and have effectively taken a half-step back.

Another half-step, I believe, comes from the extensive efforts of the Trump administration to undo Obama-era (and previous) regulations, incentives, enforcement, and measurement related to climate change.  Over the past year, for example, enforcement actions have apparently gone down 44 %, solar incentives are rapidly moving from positive to negative, regulations on things like LED lightbulbs and Energy Star labelling are undercut, and satellites key to measurement of things like Arctic sea ice are under threat or under repair from underfunding, while communication of the data suffers from extreme removal of climate change considerations.  No wonder the US appears to have seen a rise in emissions in 2017 compared to a decline in the previous two years.  And this Trump-administration effort continues to grow in scope in 2018.

Conclusion:  That Was the Year That Wasn’t

Way back when (1962-1963), a TV show took a satirical look at the news of the week with the title, “That Was the Week That Was.”  It seems to me, taking a cynical look at 2017 and our efforts to deal with climate change, that that was the Year That Wasn’t – wasn’t in net terms a real break from the “business as usual” of 2010 and before – while at least 2016 saw a major shift in reporting on climate change, some people’s and governments’ attitudes, and at least somewhat of a shift in emissions themselves. 

Will 2018 be another Year That Wasn’t?  Too early to tell.  But we couldn’t afford 2017.  And, to a greater extent, we can’t afford another year like it.

A Short Look Back at 2016

I have found very little in the last month and a half to add to previous posts.  CO2 continues its alarming rise, to what will in all likelihood be more than 406 ppm (yearly average) by end of year, and while global temperatures have ended their string of monthly records, we are still on course for a 1.2 degree C rise since 1850, about 0.3 degrees of it in the last 2 ½ years.  The big news in the Arctic (and Antarctic) is an unprecedented low in sea ice extent/area, plus record high temps in the Arctic in December – but that continues a smaller trend evident in most of the first half of 2016. 

Meanwhile, on the computing side, relatively little real-world innovation happened this year.  In-memory computing continued its steady rise in both performance and applicability, with smaller companies taking more of a lead as compared to 2015.  While blockchain technology and quantum computing made a big news splash early in the year, careful reading of “use cases” shows that real-world implementations of blockchain are thin on the ground or non-existent, as most companies try to figure out how best to make it work, while quantum computing is clearly far from real-world usefulness as of yet.

The big news in both areas, alas, is therefore the election of Donald Trump as President.  In the climate change area, as I predicted, he is proving to be an absolute disaster, with nominees for at least six posts that are climate change deniers with every incentive to make the American government a hindrance rather than a help in efforts to change “business as usual.” 

In the computing area, we see the spectacle of some large computing firms offering their services in public to Trump, an unprecedented move based on the calculation that while being seen as cooperative may not bring any benefits, failure to act in this way may cause serious problems for the firm.  Thus, we see Silicon Valley execs whose workforces are not at all enthused about Trump acting in meetings with him as if he offers new business opportunities, and IBM’s CEO announcing ways in which IBM technology can aid in achieving his presumed goals. 

It may seem odd to give such prominence to the personality of the President in assessing either climate change or the computing industry.  The fact is, however, that all of the moves I have cited are unprecedented, and derive from Trump’s personality.  To fail to consider this in assessing the likely long-run effects of the “new abnormal” in both the sustainability field and the computing industry is, imho, a failure to be an effective computer industry analyst.  And while no one likes a perpetually downbeat analyst, one that continually predicts rosy outcomes in this type of situation is simply not worth listening to.

I look back on 2016, and I see little that is permanent to celebrate – although the willingness of the media to begin to report on and accept climate change is, however temporary, worth noting.  I wish I could say that there is hope for better things in 2017; but as far as I can see, there isn’t.

In Which We Return to Arctic Sea Ice Decline and Find It Was As Bad As We Thought Seven Years Ago

For the last 3 years or so, I have rarely blogged about Arctic sea ice, because my model of how it worked seemed flawed and yet replacement models did not satisfy. 

Until 2013, measures of Arctic sea ice volume, trended downward, exponentially rather than linearly, at minimum (usually in early September).  Then, in 2013, 2014, and 2015, volume, area and extent measures seemed to rebound above 2012 almost to the levels of 2007, the first “alarm” year.  My model, which was of a cube of ice floating in water and slowly moving from one side of a glass to the other, with seasonal heat increasing yearly applied at the top, bottom, and sides, simply did not seem to reflect what was going on. 

And now comes 2016 (the year’s melting is effectively over), and it seems clear that the underlying trends remain, and even that a modified version of my model loosely fits what’s happening.  This has been an unprecedented Arctic sea ice melting year in many ways – and the strangest thing of all may be this glimpse of the familiar.

Nothing of It But Doth Change, Into Something Strange

The line is from early in Shakespeare’s Richard III, in which a character talks of his father’s drowning:  “Full fathom five my father lies/Of his bones are coral made/ … /Nothing of him but doth change,/Into something rich, and strange.”  And, indeed, the changes in this year’s Arctic sea ice saga deserve the title “sea-change.”  Here’s a list:

1. 1.       Lowest sea-ice maximum, by a significant amount, back in late March/April.
2. 2.       Lowest 12-month average.
3. 3.       Unprecedented amount of major storm activity in August.
4. 4.       Possibly greatest amount of melt during July for years when generally cloudy conditions hinder melting.
5. 5.       First sighting of a large “lake” of open water at the North Pole on Aug. 28, when two icebreakers parked next to an ice floe and one took a picture.  Santa wept.
6. 6.       First time since I have been monitoring Arctic sea ice melt when the Beaufort Sea (north of Canada and Alaska) was almost completely devoid of ice to within 5 degrees of the pole.

These events actually describe a coherent story, as I understand it.  It begins in early winter, when unusual ocean heat shows up at the edges of the ice pack, especially around Norway.  The ocean temperature (especially in the North Atlantic) has been slowly heating over time, but this time it seemed to cross a threshold:  parts of the Atlantic near Norway stayed ice free all the way through the year, leading to the lowest-ever Arctic-ocean maximum.

In May and early June, the sun was above the horizon but temperatures were still significantly below freezing in the Arctic, so relatively little melting got done. Then, when cloudy conditions descended and stayed late in June or thereabouts, the relative ocean heat counteracted some of the loss of melting energy from the sun.  But another factor emerged:  the thinness of the ice.  Over 2013, 2014, and 2015, despite the lack of summer melt, multi-year ice remained a small fraction of the whole.  So when a certain amount of melt occurred in July and August, water “punched through” in many places, so that melting was occurring not just on the top (air temperature) and bottom (ocean heat) but also the sides (ocean heat) of ice floes.  And this Swiss cheese effect was happening not just at the periphery, but all over the central Arctic – hence the open water at the Pole.

Then came the storms of August.  In previous years, at any time of the year, the cloudiness caused by storms counteracted their heat energy.  This year, the thin, broken ice was driven by waves that packed some of the storms’ energy, further melting them.  And, of course, one of the side effects was to drive sea ice completely out of the Beaufort Sea.

Implications For The Future

It is really hard to find good news in this year’s Arctic sea ice melting season.  Years 2013-2015 were years of false hope, in which although it seemed that although eventually Arctic sea ice must reach zero at minimum (defined as less than 1% of the Arctic Ocean covered with ice), we had reached a period of flat sea ice volume, which only a major disturbance such as abundant sunshine in July and August could tip into a new period of decline. 

However, the fact of 2016 volume decrease in such unpromising weather conditions has pretty much put paid to those hopes.  It is hard to see what can stop continued volume decreases, since neither clouds nor storms will apparently do so any longer.  One can argue that the recent el Nino artificially boosted ocean temperatures, although it is not clear how it could have such a strong relative effect; but there is no sign that ocean heat will return to 2013-2015 levels now that the el Nino is over.  

Instead, the best we can apparently hope for is a year or two of flatness at the present volume levels if such an el Nino effect exists, not a return to 2013-2015 levels.  My original off-the-cuff projection “if this [volume decreases 2000-2012] goes on” was for zero Arctic sea ice around 2018, and while I agree that the 2013-2015 “pause” makes 2018 very unlikely, 2016 also seems to make any “zero date” after 2030 less likely than zero Arctic sea ice at some point in the 2020s. 

A second conclusion I draw is that my old model, while far overestimating the effects of “bottom heating” pre-2016, now works much better in the “fragmented ice” state of today’s Arctic sea ice in July and August.  In this model, as ice volume approaches zero at minimum, volume flattens out, while extent decreases rapidly and area more rapidly still (unless the ice is compacted by storms, as occurred this year).  This effect will be unclear to some extent, as present measurement instruments can’t distinguish between “melt ponds” caused by the sun’s heat and actual open water.

Finally, the Arctic sea “ice plug” that slowed Greenland glacier melt by pushing back against glacier sea outlets continues to appear less and less powerful.  This year, almost the entire west coast of Greenland was clear of ice by early to mid June – a situation I cannot recall ever happening while I’ve been watching.  Since this speeds glacier flow and therefore melting at its terminus entering the sea, it appears that this decade, like the 1990s and 2000s, will show a doubling of Greenland snow/ice melt.  James Hansen’s model, which assumes this will continue for at least another couple of decades, projects 6-10 feet of sea rise by 2100.  And even this may be optimistic – as I hope to discuss in a follow-on post on 2016’s sudden CO2 rise.

Most sobering of all, in one sense we are already as near to zero Arctic sea ice as makes no difference.  Think of my model of an ice cube floating in water in a glass for a minute, and imagine that instead of a cube you see lots of thin splinters of ice.  You know that it will take very little for that ice to vanish, whereas if the same volume of ice were still concentrated in one cube it will take much more.  By what I hear of on-the-ground reports, much of the remaining ice in the Arctic right now is those thin chunks of ice floating in water. 

“Because I do not hope to turn again/Because I do not hope/ … May the judgment not be too heavy on us/ … Teach us to care and not to care.”  T.S. Eliot, Ash Wednesday

Climate Change: More “Business As Unusual”

The extreme highs in atmospheric carbon continue to occur.  This week is virtually certain to surpass 408 ppm, and therefore the month as a whole is virtually certain to surpass 407.6 ppm, a new historic high, and probably more than 4 ppm greater than last year.  If trends continue, the increase in ppm will probably set another new record, being much greater during the first five months of this year than last year’s average gain of 3.05 ppm (my off-the-cuff estimate so far is 3.5 ppm).  To repeat, this is a greater increase and percentage increase than that during the last comparable el Nino.  This calls into question, I repeat, whether our present efforts (as opposed to those to which Paris climate talks committed) are really doing anything significant to avoid “business as usual.”

Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice extent is far below even the previous record low for this time of year.  The apparent cause is increased sea and air temperatures plus favorable melting conditions in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific, partially supplemented by unusually early “total melt” on land in both Canada/Alaska and Scandinavia/Russia.  Unless present weather trends sharply change over the next 3 months, new record Arctic ice lows are as likely as not, and “ice-free” (less than 1 million sq kilometers) conditions are for the first time a (remote) possibility.

Finally, here are the climate change thoughts of the Republican candidate for next President of the United States, with commentary (which I echo) from David Roberts:

[The excerpt starts with footage from a press conference, followed by an introduction, followed by Trump’s speech]

This is ... not an energy speech.

Trump now arguing that coal mining is a delightful job that people love to do.

Trump wants the Keystone pipeline, but he wants a better deal -- 'a piece of the profits for Americans.'

Facepalm forever.

'We're the highest taxed nation, by far.' That is flatly false, not that anyone cares.

75% of federal regulations are 'terrible for the country.' Sigh.

'I know a lot about solar.' Followed by several grossly inaccurate assertions about solar.

I can't believe I just got suckered into watching a Trump press conference.

And now I'm listening to bad heavy metal as I wait for the real speech. This day has become hallucinatory.

Speech finally getting under way. Oil baron Harold Hamm here to introduce Trump.

Oh, good, Hamm explained energy to Trump in 30 minutes. We're all set.

Here's ND's [North Dakota] own Kevin Cramer, representing the oil & gas industry. Thankfully, he's gonna keep it short.

What even is this music?

Trump loves farmers. 'Now you can fall asleep while we talk about energy.' Wait what.

Trump now repeating Clinton coal 'gaffe,' a story the media cooked up & served to him. Awesome, media.

Honestly, Trump sounds like he's reading this speech for the first time. Like he's reacting to it, in asides, as he reads it.

Trump promises 'complete American energy independence -- COMPLETE.' That is utter nonsense.

This is amazing. He is literally reading oil & gas talking points, reacting to them in real time. We're all discovering this together.

Clinton will "unleash" EPA to "control every aspect of our lives." Presumably also our precious bodily fluids.

Trump is having obvious difficulty staying focused on reading his speech. He so badly wants to just do his freestyle-nonsense thing.

Can't stop laughing. He's reading this sh** off the teleprompter & then expressing surprise & astonishment at it. Reading for the 1st time!

He can't resist. Wandering off into a tangent about terrorism. Stay focused, man!

Oh, good, renewable energy gets a tiny shoutout. But not to the exclusion of other energies that are "working much better."

We're gonna solve REAL environmental problems. Not the phony ones. Go ahead, man, say it ...

(1) Rescind all Obama executive actions. (2) Save the coal industry (doesn't say how). (3) Ask TransCanada to renew Keystone proposal.

(4) Lift all restrictions on fossil exploration on public land. (5) Cancel Paris climate agreement. (6) Stop US payments to UN climate fund.

(7) Eliminate all the bad regulations. (8) Devolve power to local & state level. (9) Ensure all regs are good for US workers.

(10) Gonna protect environment -- "clean air & clean water" -- but, uh, not with regulations!

(11) Lifting all restrictions on fossil fuel export will, according to right-wing hack factory, create ALL THE BILLIONS OF US MONIES.

Let us pause to note: this is indistinguishable from standard GOP energy policy, dating all the way back to Reagan. Rhetoric unchanged.

"ISIS has the oil from Libya."

Notable: not a single mention of climate change, positive or negative. Just one passing reference to "phony" environmental problems.

And this, in the Senate and House of Representatives, is what keeps the US from far more effective action on climate change.  To slightly alter George Lucas in the Star Wars series, this is how humanity ends most of itself --- to thunderous applause.

That is all.

Climate Change Bulletin 2016 #1

In the last week of December 2015, a storm from the northern United States surged northwards, reaching a near-record low barometer reading and, for a period of about 22 hours, heating the air on a line running along the eastern coast of Greenland to the North Pole to above freezing – or more than 50 degrees F above the average temperature at this time of year.  It was the deepest into winter that above-freezing temperatures had been recorded by almost a month, and it was accompanied by rain whose warm moisture caused serious melting of sea and land (Greenland) ice.

The consensus of scientific observers has been that such an occurrence at this time of year will not by itself significantly reduce the sea ice at maximum or minimum.  However, it will give a significant acceleration to melting of Greenland’s glaciers into the sea, thus keeping the “doubling every decade” trend of Greenland land ice melt going.  This is not a one-off event, but rather related to the “wavy jet stream” pattern of weather in the winter that will not only export colder air south but also import much warmer air north into the Arctic.  In other words, this event suggests that the pessimistic forecast of sea rise of 15-30 feet this century is more in line with what is happening than more optimistic forecasts of 1-15 feet.

That is all. 

Climate Change: That Is All

In the movie M*A*S*H, someone would periodically announce upsetting news like “The US announced today that it had tested a nuclear device with one thousand times the explosive power of the bomb at Hiroshima” in a matter-of-fact voice, and would end the announcement with a brief “That is all.”

A recent study has now projected that under the “best-case scenario” (now changed to have atmospheric carbon level off at 525 ppm rather than just above 400 ppm) temperatures over the middle of the 21^st century will increase by 0.5 degree F per decade, and in the Arctic by 1 degree F.  In the worst-case scenario, temperatures will increase by 1 degree F per decade, and in the Arctic by 2 degrees F.  None of these scenarios take into account melting permafrost, which is likely to increase atmospheric carbon and the increase in temperature yet further.

In the Arctic, after 2 years in which sea ice minima reverted to a little above the level of 2007, it now appears very likely that the yearly maximum will be well below past recorded maxima, and will be the first recorded maximum at less than 14 million km.  Meanwhile, a weak el Nino has been announced, and in the past el Ninos have been associated with accelerated sea ice melting over the summer.  Another recent study has shown that on average 65 % of Arctic sea ice has vanished since 1975, and 85 % at sea ice minimum in September.  Another study has found that a so-called “hiatus” or “slowdown” over the last 15-20 years in global warming does not exist once Arctic data are added.  It is anticipated that over the next few decades, the global warming will speed up instead of rising at a constant rate, and therefore warming south of the Arctic will likewise speed up.

Another study has shown that melting of Greenland land ice is proceeding faster than previously thought, and therefore its contribution to sea level rise in the next few decades is going to be greater than anticipated (in previous studies that projected a 6 foot rise by the end of the century).  In the Antarctic, likewise, studies show the present rate of land ice melt has been underestimated, and therefore that Antarctic melting will likewise contribute significantly to sea level rise.

Finally, atmospheric carbon measurements for February are now out.  For the first time since records began to be kept in the 1950s, February atmospheric carbon is above 400 ppm, and approximately 2.5 ppm above last year.

That is all.

James Hansen’s Climate Change Magnum Opus: Unsurpassed Horror and Sad Beauty

I warn you that this description of the latest draft paper by James Hansen and others should horrify you, if you are sane.  After Joe Romm first published its sound bite (30 degrees Fahrenheit increase if most fossil fuels are burned, 50 degrees at higher latitudes), I delayed reading it in detail. Now that I have, I find it builds on his (and others’) 40 years of work in the area and the latest research to provide an up-to-date climate change model whose implications are mostly more alarming than any I have seen elsewhere. 

What follows is my layperson’s attempt to summarize and draw further conclusions. I scant the discussion of new analyses of previous episodes of global warming (and cooling) that allow the development of the new model, focusing instead on the mechanisms and implications of the model.  Please note that, afaik, this is the first model that attempts to fully include the effects of methane and permafrost melting.

It’s About CO2

The first insight in the new model I summarize as follows:

As atmospheric CO2 increases or decreases, global average temperature increases or decreases proportionally, with a lag either way typically of a few decades.

This increase or decrease can be broken down into three parts:

1.       The immediate effect of the CO2 itself -- perhaps 60% of the total effect.

2.       The immediate and “over a few decades” effect of other “greenhouse gases” , or GHGs (here we are talking particularly about the methane in permafrost and methane hydrates on the continental shelves, released by warming, as well as GHGs such as nitrous oxide) – perhaps 20% of the total effect.

3.       The so-called “fast feedback” effects, in which the released CO2 and other factors (e.g., increased albedo) lead to additional warming “over a few decades”.

Two quick notes:  First, Hansen does not do my split; instead, he distinguishes between the effects of CO2 and the effects of other GHGs over the medium term (about 75-25) and then separately distinguishes between the immediate overall “climate sensitivity” and the medium-term or total “climate sensitivity” (again, about 75 % immediately and 100 % in the long term).  Second, the “over a few decades” is my interpretation of how quickly “X times CO2” seems to match global temperature data over more recent sets of data.  Hansen might very well say that this may or may not occur quite this rapidly, but it doesn’t matter to him because even with a thousand-year time frame for the full effect, CO2 will not be recycled out of the atmosphere for “few thousand years”, so we still reach the full “climate sensitivity”.

Just to get the usual objections out of the way, Hansen is not saying that CO2 always leads the way – on the contrary, in Ice Age scenarios in which a certain point in a Milankovitch cycle causes extreme winters in our northern hemisphere, leading to increased glaciation and therefore decreased albedo and CO2 release to the atmosphere, CO2 follows other factors.  Today, however, primarily because of fossil-fuel emissions, CO2 is leading the way.

A sub-finding, still important, is that there is a linear relationship (again, sometimes with a lag of decades) between deep-ocean temperature change and atmospheric temperature change (expressed as “the change in temp at the surface is somewhere between 1.5 and 2.5 times the change in temp of the deep ocean” – or, about 67% of the global temperature increase goes into surface temps, 33% into deep ocean temps).  I include this because it seems that the recent “slowdown” in global surface temperature ascent is primarily caused by increased accumulation in the deep ocean.  However, again in a relatively short time frame, we should go back to more rapid average global surface temperature increases, because we’re still increasing atmospheric CO2 rapidly and 2/3 of that will start again going back into surface temps.

The Effect of “CO2 Plus” Is Bigger Than We Thought

In the past, Hansen among others has seen the effect of doubled CO2 as somewhere in the 2-3 degrees Celsius range.  Now, he sees a range of 3-4 degrees C – apparently, primarily because he now takes into account “other GHGs”.  To put it more pointedly, in my own interpretation:

Each doubling of CO2 leads to a global temperature change of 2.25-3 degrees Celsius (4-5.4 degrees F) “over a few decades”, and to a change of 3-4 degrees C (5.4-7.2 degrees F) “over 1 or 2 centuries.”

I mention this not only because the consequences of today’s global warming are more dire than we thought (i.e., the effects of that warming, immediately and over the next century or two), but also because many of us are still hung up over that “stop emissions and hold the increase to 2 degrees C” target that was the main topic at recent global governmental summits.  The atmospheric CO2 level at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution was about 250 parts per million (ppm), and is now at about 400 ppm.  If you do the math, that means we have baked in at least 2.2-3 degrees C of global temperature increase already. After 15 years of inaction, that target now has zero chance of success.

At this point, I want to do a shout-out to those wonderful folks at the Arctic Sea Ice blog and forum.  Hansen specifically notes the data supporting melting of Arctic sea ice, plus collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, at levels slightly below today’s CO2.  He also notes data supporting the idea that Greenland and West Antarctica can go pretty rapidly, “in a few centuries”, iirc – I interpret “in a few centuries” as within 250-450 years from now.

The Percent of Fossil Fuels We Need To Leave In The Ground Forever Is Greater Than We Thought

Before I get to the consequences if we don’t leave a percentage of fossil fuels in the ground, let’s see how the minimum amount of fossil fuels burned before we reach “worst consequences” has changed. Today’s estimate of total recoverable fossil-fuel reserves (coal, oil [primarily tar sands and oil shale], and natural gas) is about the equivalent of 15,000 Gt C (billions of tons of carbon emitted).  Of this, coal is about 7.3-11 Gt C, and the rest is split approximately equivalently between natural gas and tar sands/oil shale. Originally, we thought that burning 10,000 Gt C in the next century would get us to “worst consequences”.  Now, Hansen places the correct amount as somewhere between 5,000 Gt C and 10,000 Gt C.  Reading between the lines, I am placing the range as 6,000-7,000 Gt C, with 5,000 Gt C if we want to be ultra-safe, and I’m estimating coal as 60% of the emittable total, 20% tar sands/oil shale/oil, 20% natural gas.  Note, btw, that according to Hansen fossil-fuel emissions have increased consistently by about 3 % per year since 1950, including last year. At that rate, we’d reach 6,000-7,000 Gt C in about 65-70 years.

Again, note that Hansen breaks the fossil fuels down as coal, traditional oil/gas, and oil shale/tar sands/fracked gas, so I’m guesstimating the equivalents.

So here’s the way it works out:

If we burn all the coal plus a very minor amount of everything else, we reach “worst consequences.”

If we burn all of everything but coal and 33% of the coal, we reach “worst consequences”.

If we burn 17% of the coal, 50% of the natural gas, and all the tar sands/oil shale/oil, we reach “worst consequences”.

So this, imho, is why I agree with Hansen that allowing the Keystone XL pipeline is “game over” for the climate, as in “worst consequences almost inevitable”.  The Keystone XL pipeline is a “gateway drug” for tar sands and oil shale.  The source (Alberta, Canada) has a large part of the known tar sands oil, and presents similar difficulties in abstracting and processing to oil shale.  It’s the furthest along in terms of entering the world market.  If that source succeeds, as the saying goes, once the nose of the camel is in the tent, you may expect the rest of the camel to enter.  In this case, if Alberta succeeds in getting the Keystone XL pipeline, it is probably the case that most of the tar sands and oil shale will be used; if not, probably not.

Right now, Alberta has no real buyers except the US, and the US is not set up to accept the oil, nor Canada to ship it to them in bulk.  The pipeline would effectively create an infrastructure to ship it, primarily to the rest of the world, which presumably would accept it – especially China – creating a market that allows Alberta profitability.  Alternatives are much more costly, are susceptible to pressure from the US, and would probably not be undertaken at all.  Note that increased shipment via truck is more costly, and would probably require major investments in truck structure, to handle the more toxic tar-sands crude, so that it is probably not a large-scale alternative that would make the project a success.  Likewise, trains and tracks to the Canadian ports to ship directly to world markets would probably prove too costly.

Now go back to the model.  It’s pretty darn likely we’ll burn 17% of the coal no matter what, and the majority of the natural gas.  Now add the tar sands and oil shale.  Worst consequences, here we come.

The Worst Is Likelier Than We Thought, Arrives Sooner, Is Almost As Bad As Our Worst Nightmare, And Is More Inescapable Once We Get There Than We Hoped

We’ve already dealt with “likelier than we thought”, and we can guess from the rapidity of response to atmospheric CO2 rise and the increase in the estimated climate sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 that it arrives sooner than we had projected. But what is this “worst consequences almost as bad as our worst nightmare”, and “worst consequences, once arrived, more inescapable that we hoped”?

For us, the worst consequences are not “snowball Earth”, locked in eternal ice, but “runaway GHG Earth” a la Venus, with the surface and air too hot and too acid to support water or any life at all (water vapor in the atmosphere vaporizes from the heat long before it reaches the surface).  It’s an inescapable condition, since once the atmosphere locks in the heat, the Sun’s heat from outside trapped by the CO2 and other gases in the atmosphere balances escaping heat from the troposphere (top of the atmosphere).  Hansen’s model shows that we are still 100 million to 1 billion years from being able to reach that state, even by burning all fossil fuels in a gigantic funeral pyre. 

The worst consequence, as cited before, is therefore as cited at the very beginning, Joe Romm’s sound bite:  30 degrees F increase globally, 50 degrees in the high latitudes.  Here’s Hansen’s take on what that means:  it will take all areas of the Earth except the mountains above 35 degrees C “wet bulb temperature” during their summers.  That in turn, according to Hansen, would mean the following: 

In the worst-consequence world, humans could survive below the mountains during the day outside only for short periods of time during the summer, and there would be few if any places to grow grains. 

Effectively, most areas of the globe would be Death Valley-like or worse, at least during the summer.

Here I think Hansen, because he properly doesn’t diverge into movement polewards of weather patterns and the effects of high water and possible toxic blooms, underestimates the threat to humanity’s survival.  Recent research suggests that with global warming, tropic climates stretch northwards.  Thus, projections for the US (not to mention Europe below Scandinavia, Australia, southern Africa, and southern Russia) is for extreme drought.  How can this be, when there will be lots of increased water vapor in the air?  Answer: it will be rare in falling, and far more massive and violent when it does.  The heat will bake the ground hard, so that when it does rain, the rain will merely bounce off the ground and run off (with possible erosion), rather than irrigating anything.  Add depletion of aquifers and of ice-pack runoff, and it will be very hard to grow anything (I suppose, mountains partially excepted) below Siberia, northern Canada/Alaska, and Scandinavia. 

However, these have their own problems:  rains too massive (and violent) to support large-scale agriculture – which is why you don’t see farming on Seattle’s Olympic Peninsula.  The only “moderate-rainfall” areas projected as of now, away from the sea and the equator, are a strip in northern Canada, one in northern Argentina, one in Siberia, and possibly one in Manchuria. Most of this land is permafrost right now.  To even start farming there would require waiting until the permafrost melts, and moving in the meantime to “intermediate” farming areas.  Two moves, minimal farmland, and greater challenges from violent weather.  Oh, and if you want to turn to hunting you’ll be lucky if you have an ecosystem that supports top-level meat animals, not to mention the 90% of plant and animal species that will likely be extinct by then. As for the ocean, forget about it as a food source, unless you like jellyfish (according to research done for the UN recently).

In my version of Hansen's worst-consequence world, we would try to survive on less than 10 % of today's farmland, less than 10% of the animal and vegetable species with disrupted ecosystems, and practically zero edible ocean species, in territory that must be developed before it is usable, in dangerous weather, for thousands of years.

Hansen notes that one effective animal evolutionary response to past heat episodes has been hereditary dwarfism.  Or, as I like to think about it, we could all become hobbits.  However, because we are heading towards this excessive heat much faster than in those times, we can’t evolve fast enough; so that’s out.

What about inescapable?  Well, according to Hansen, CO2 levels would not get out of what he calls the “moderately moist greenhouse” area for thousands of years, and would not reach close to where we are now until 10,000-100,000 years hence.  By which time, not only will we be dead, but most of humanity, if not all.

Now, I had feared the Venus scenario, so the worst consequences are not as bad as I thought.  However, the increased estimate for temperatures in the moderately moist greenhouse and the wet bulb temperature consideration makes the next-worst scenario more likely than before to end humanity altogether. 

Snowball Earth:  Sad Beauty of a Sidelight

Having said all this, Hansen at least gives a beautiful analysis of why we don’t wind up a “snowball Earth” (the opposite scenario from a “runaway greenhouse”).  He notes that once the Earth is covered with ice, carbon can’t be recycled to the Earth via “weathering” (absorption from the atmosphere by rocks whose surfaces are abraded by wind and water).  So volcanic emissions and the like put more and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, until the temperature warms up enough and melting of the ice begins.  Apparently, evidence suggests that this may have happened once or twice in the past, when the Sun was delivering less light and hence heat.

Envoi

The usual caveats apply.  Primarily, they fall in the category of “I was reading Hansen out of fear, and so I may be stretching the outer limits of what may happen, just as Hansen may be understating out of scientific conservatism.”  Make up your own mind.

I am reminded of a British Beyond the Fringe comedy skit about WW II, suitably amended:

“Go up in the air, carbon. Don’t come back.”

“Goodbye, sir.  Or perhaps it’s ‘au revoir’?”

“No, carbon.”

And what will it take for humanity to really start listening to Hansen, and to the science?

 

Some Fascinating If Minor Effects of the Ocean and the Air on Global Warming

Over the last four years, I have seen some reports on scientific research into climate mechanisms involving the ocean and the atmosphere (lower and upper) that I regard as both fascinating and (apparently) often misunderstood.  So here’s a quick note on what I understand in general to be the import of these mechanisms.  As always, there will probably be mistakes in my summary:  Caveat lector.

The Fate of Greenland

That actually was the title of a book by (iirc) MIT researchers that summarized the first, and imho most major, of these mechanisms.  It works like this:  warm surface water flows in the Gulf Stream current northeast.  Off Greenland, it dives down to the deep ocean, and becomes a current flowing south through the Atlantic.  When it reaches Antarctica, it flows as a current halfway around the world and starts flowing north again, to surface somewhere around the Bering Strait – a journey of maybe 100-150 years.  This current is therefore continually refreshing the warmth of the deep ocean, and is one mechanism by which the heat of the surface water is transmitted to the deep ocean.

What causes the Gulf Stream to sink is that it becomes relatively salt-heavy compared to the water around it.  However, periodically, when temperatures get too warm, sea ice in the area melts.  Sea ice when it originally forms expels the salt; when it melts, therefore, it releases relatively non-salty water – and the Gulf Stream stops sinking.  This, in turn, stops the ocean “conveyor” of deep-water heat and, 100-150 years later, stops the warming of the Bering Strait (and therefore Arctic) water as well – which causes the water around Greenland to cool again and the Gulf Stream to dive again.  You may remember that this is the phenomenon that caused many to fear just such a Gulf Stream failure due to global warming – and so you had doomsday predictions of a collapse of temperatures in northern North America and northern Europe, which are today warmed beyond their latitude by the Gulf Stream.  Alas, all indicators are that such a stoppage, if it is happening, is happening only slowly, and by the time the Gulf Stream stopped a rise in temperature that would more than compensate may well have happened.

So how has this ocean current played into global warming so far?  I believe it has played a minor but significant role in Arctic melt.  Bear in mind that Arctic sea ice never extends to the bottom of the Arctic sea, and below it is salt-heavy water that flows (bearing the ice with it) more or less from the Bering Strait across the North Pole to Greenland and Iceland and the North Atlantic.  The warming of 1910 is now surfacing in the Bering Strait and going to warm the ice in the Arctic from below and the side – a small warming, according to measurements in the Bering Strait, but I believe a significant factor in the melting of Arctic sea ice we have seen over the last 20 years, along with increased summer heat melting the ice from above.  That effect, while still minor, can only increase as, over the next 50 years, we begin to enter the period of more rapid ocean-surface/Gulf-stream warming from 1913-1963. And, of course, the warming of the waters around Greenland will grease the skids of Greenland’s land glaciers, accelerating the raising of ocean levels.

Boys, Girls, and Oscillations

By now, probably, many have heard of the El Nino (“the boy”) effect, and some of the contrary La Nina (“the girl”) effect.  Briefly, periodically an unusually warm ocean-surface current (el Nino) arrives in Ecuador from the Pacific.  This is the crest of a decade-long or so period when this current is unusually warm.  Likewise, periodically an unusually cool current (la Nina) arrives, and is the trough of a decade-long or so period when this current is unusually cool.

The ripple effects of an el Nino are global.  We see higher global temperatures, especially in places like the US western seacoast.  It may affect a characteristic of the northern latitudes called the North Atlantic Oscillation (basically the location of a place of low [?] pressure in the Atlantic near/in the Arctic), which when “positive” brings hotter weather to northern Europe and cooler weather to North America, and when “negative” brings cooler weather to northern Europe and hotter weather to North America.  An el Nino seems to be mostly associated with a “positive” NAO, and a la Nina with a “negative” NAO.

A recent study shows that in the period of today’s global warming, an el Nino period corresponds to 10-20 years of accelerated global warming, and a la Nina period to 10-20 years of “hiatus”, meaning no or slower global warming.  Over the last fifteen years, we have seen a hiatus period following an unusually strong el Nino in 1998, plus acceleration in underlying global warming.  Thus, although we have not broken the 1998 global temperature record, we are continuing to see global temperatures rise from year to year, from 1999 onwards.  What is worse, the la Nina period should be coming to its end – indeed, some expected it to end in 2012.  It is possible that global warming’s effects on ocean-surface and deep-ocean warming may have disrupted the timing of el Nino – but, failing that, what we have seen over the last 15 years may have been a relatively halcyon period.

The other interesting finding from this study and a previous one is that el Nino has an effect not only on weather patterns, but also on the ocean – more specifically, on transmission of heat from the ocean’s surface to the deep ocean.  The off-Greenland “heat sink”, it turns out, is only one of four such transmission places from surface to deep ocean, one in the Northern Pacific, one in the southern Pacific near Antarctica, and one in the southern Atlantic near Antarctica.  In all of these places, the wind patterns essentially form an ellipse around a center.  El Nino affects these winds such that transmission to the deep ocean decreases, and there is more surface heat and less deep-ocean heat, and la Nina makes the transmission increase, so that there is more deep-ocean heating and less of the surface heat that contributes to global warmth.  Note also that global-warming-driven greater energy in the circum-Antarctic current may have actually increased the “heat sink” there, slowing global warming independently of the el Nino effect, but no one is quite sure of that one. 

So what we have so far is a longer-term (100-150 years) ocean global-warming effect that over the next 100 years will become more and more serious, plus a decades-long oscillation that over the long term has zero effect on global warming but can deceive you about the trend – if you let it.

Mongolian Weirding

OK, this one is based a bit on preliminary research, and is the least important in the medium and long terms as regards global warming.  But it’s so weird …

As I understand it, it begins when the temperature somewhere above the Tarim desert “basin” near Mongolia warms just enough to allow the heat of that basin to rise towards the troposphere (upper atmosphere).  That warming is automagically transmitted northward to the Arctic, where for some reason the transmission of heat to the troposphere removes much of the heat-trapping ozone there (?).  As a result, especially in winter, the Arctic actually becomes colder, and this in turn propels a greater differential with temperatures farther south.  This, in turn, means that the jet stream, which operates in the troposphere, fluctuates more north and south, and this in turn causes more frequent intrusion of cold Arctic temperatures to the south.  Hence, apparently, last winter.  And we can blame it all on Mongolia …

Apparently, because of global warming that effect has been happening more often.  And yet, compared to the other effects I’ve discussed, in the medium and long terms this is pocket change.  So, the jet stream oscillates more often; but the Arctic is also warming much faster than everywhere else, to the tune of 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, so the effects of jet-stream-induced cold from the Arctic are steadily being muted.  Clearly, as the incredibly warm North American winter of two years ago shows, in the medium term Nino/Nina and the NAO dominate, and in the long term CO2-induced global warming dominates. But the Mongolian effect is just so weird …

Prehistorical Minimum

I see a few who in analyzing these effects attempt to apply a simplistic rule:  “The last time this happened …” As in, the last time we reached 400 ppm the Arctic was ice-free year-round, and the seas were 100 feet higher.  Referring to the past, in the case of these three effects, is likely to understate global warming and its effects over the next 100 years. 

For example, beyond perhaps 10 million years ago there was no join between North and South America, and therefore the Pacific el Nino probably flowed directly through the Atlantic until it hit Europe, while there was probably no Gulf Stream.  Was there therefore less of a “Greenland heat sink” in those days?  Probably, but it was far outweighed by the relative slowness of the CO2 increase in a Milankovitch cycle or a undersea-volcano-driven CO2 increase, and also outweighed by the ability of weatherization and the like to catch up to and counteract CO2-driven increases in ocean-surface temperature. 

For another thing, there was an open question a decade ago about the rate of global warming for a certain amount of CO2 – this discussion of “heat sinks” seems to have ended most of the uncertainty.  In other words, one could look at the rate of warming and, depending on the rate in which heating went into the ocean surface and into the deep ocean, come up with a wide range of estimates for directly CO2-driven global warming.  Well, now we appear to know that we were looking during a period of unusual la-Nina-driven deep-ocean heating, and therefore our estimates of CO2 “forcing” are narrowing in on the high side of the estimate range.  Not good news …

So I guess my overall message is that most of these effects have served in the past to allow some to underestimate the seriousness of global warming.  Now that we know them, their effects are clearly fascinating but minor in the grand scheme of things.  Fun to write about; but let’s not take our eyes off the prize.  If we do, that prize will likely be Pandora’s box – without the Hope.