Tag Archives: Climate Change

What is the “pause” in global warming?

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A new paper (commentary) on the so-called “pause in global warming” puts it all together.

First let’s establish this as a starting point. When climate science contrarians refer to a “pause” or “hiatus” in global warming, they usually mean that the process of warming of the Earth’s surface caused by the human release of greenhouse gas is not a thing. They are usually implying, or overtly claiming, that the link between CO2 and other greenhouse gas pollutants and surface warming was never there to begin with, and previous warming, warming before “the pause,” was natural variation. Many even go so far as to claim that the Earth’s surface temperature will go down to levels seen decades ago.

“The Pause” is not, in their minds, a slowdown in the rate of warming. It is a disconnect, either there all along or produced somehow recently, between the physics of the greenhouse effect and reality.

Also, the evidence adduced for this “pause” is often bogus. Sometimes badly calibrated satellite data is used to show a flat Earth surface. Er, flat Earth surface temperature. Sometimes a line is drawn from an unusually warm, even under conditions of global warming, El Niño year, to later years, lately excluding record breaking recent warm years, in order to make the line flatter. So, that part of the denier pause is a different kind of lie. See this post and this post for recent research on this issue.

Having said all that, there have been frequent slowdowns and speed-ups in the rate of the planet’s surface warming throughout the entire instrumental record. (Even though the instrumental record begins in 1850 or 1880, depending on which data set you use, greenhouse gas pollution started before that, so some greenhouse warming has been happening all along).

Prior some date, like 1970 perhaps, the up and down variations in surface temperature has been a combination of natural variation and human caused variation, with both being strong factors. The human caused variation includes particulate pollution (from burning coal, mainly) which pushes the temperature down, and greenhouse gas release and its associated effects, which push the temperature up.

For the last third or so of the 20th century, through the present, while both natural and human-caused effects matter, the role of human effects has increased to be the dominant force in the overall trend. The natural variations continue to contribute to the shape of the curve, but this contribution is attenuated by the increased abundance of human generated greenhouse gas.

For the last few years, we have seen several research projects that look at the “pause.” Many of these projects helped to explain the slowdown by showing that it wasn’t really as much of a slowdown as previously thought. For example, some research showed that the surface warming in recent decades has been under-measured because the Arctic (and probably the interior of Africa) were getting warmer faster, compared to other regions, and those areas were under-sampled by the usual data sets. Also, heat has been moving in and out of the ocean all along, and that has had an effect on the surface temperaturews.

But even after accounting for all of these effects, there is still a slowdown.

John C. Fyfe, Gerald A. Meehl, Matthew H. England, Michael E. Mann, Benjamin D. Santer, Gregory M. Flato, Ed Hawkins, Nathan P. Gillett, Shang-Ping Xie, Yu Kosaka and Neil C. Swart have just published a commentary in Nature Climate Change called “Making sense of the early-2000s warming slowdown” that looks at what caused this partial flattening out of the upward trend in global surface temperatures.

Part of this investigation compares the earlier part of the 20th century, when there was a much more significant slowdown in warming, with the more recent slowdown. Fyfe et al note that there are two major contributors to variation in surface temperature aside from greenhouse gases. One is the abundance of aerosols, such as industrial pollution (more of a factor during the earlier hiatus) and the output of volcanoes (such as the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo). The other is multi-decade scale variation in the interaction between the oceans and the atmosphere. The following figure compares the two periods of reduced rate of warming.

Screen Shot 2016-02-23 at 1.22.39 PM

As noted in the caption, the two periods are representations of how far off from expected (based on simple greenhouse warming) each period is. It happens that these two periods of slowdown in rate of warming are associated with the negative phase of a major ocean-atmosphere interaction, during which the ocean was eating up some of the extra heat, removing it from the atmosphere. The intervening period of increased rate of warming (from the mid 1970s to about 2000) is associated with a period when this system was in positive phase, putting heat out into the atmosphere. As I’ve noted before, the ocean, which takes up most of the global warming caused heat, is the dog, and the atmosphere is the tail. This is a graph of a dog wagging its tail.

It is not clear when the multi-decade scale ocean-atmosphere interactions will shift to a positive phase. If you look at just the raw numbers, it seems like this may have started a few years ago (around late 2013) but the index for this phenomenon varies enough (goes positive and negative and back over shorter time periods, briefly) that this is not certain. More recently, we have an El Nino causing the belching of heat form the ocean to the air, heating up the surface. This may or may not be related to the multi-decade pattern. Having said all that, we may be concerned that over the next ten years or so, starting about now, we will be in a positive phase during which the rate of warming will be accelerated. This may not be the case. Or it might be the case. No one is actually betting on this yet.

New Research On The Rising Sea

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Human caused greenhouse gas pollution has locked us into a situation where the global sea level will rise, at an unknown rate, high enough to inundate most major coastal cities and vast areas of agricultural land in low lying countries, and wipe out thousands of islands. Entire countries (small, low lying ones, and pacific ocean nations) will either disappear entirely or be made very small. Even as we head towards a likely limit in global food production in relation to increasing demand, large productive agricultural areas will be destroyed. As far as I can tell, there is nothing to stop this from happening, though reducing our greenhouse gas pollution to zero over the next several decades may prevent the global ocean from rising to its absolutely maximum amount.

So sea level rise is important.

The surface of the Earth comes in two forms: Ocean bottom and continent. They are totally different geologically, with the ocean bottom consisting of relatively heavy basaltic rock formed at the margins between spreading plates, and continents of lighter rock, generally formed from below.

The global ocean sits mainly on the oceanic plates, but at its edges (except in a very few special locations), it rests against those continents. Over time the sea rises and falls. When the sea is at its lowest point, with a good amount of its volume reduced because it is trapped in glacial ice, most of the continents are exposed. When the sea is at its highest point, vast areas of the continental margins are inundated. At present, the ocean is pretty high, covering much of the continental margin that it ever covers, but there is room to grow, with large areas of the coastline subject to future inundation.

Rising surface temperatures caused directly or indirectly by human release of greenhouse gas pollution melt glaciers and warm the ocean, both of which are causing the global sea level to rise. This is a long and complicated process. We add greenhouse gas, mainly CO2, to the atmosphere, and this causes warming, enhanced by various positive feedbacks that either cause an increase of additional greenhouse gases such as water vapor, methane, and more CO2, or reduce the ability of certain natural systems to absorb these gasses. The greenhouse gas causes warming, which causes more greenhouse gas, which causes more warming. Meanwhile, most of this extra heat is actually trapped in the ocean where it only contributes a little to melting glaciers, but does contribute to expanding the volume of the ocean. The ultimate amount of heating, and the ultimate amount of sea level rise, takes a long time to be realized, and the rate of this change is only roughly estimated.

What we have already done to the atmosphere will cause sea level rise to continue for a very long time, possibly many centuries, possibly thousands of years. We have increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere from the mid 200s parts per million (ppm) to 400ppm, and we expect that increase to continue for decades. Evidence from the past, through the science of paleoclimatology, tells us that when the atmosphere holds between 400ppm and 500ppm of CO2, the global sea level is many meters above the present level.

Understanding sea level change is therefore critically important to understanding the impacts of climate change. We can measure current sea level rise and assume that steady increase over time (even if it is a bit variable) is mostly caused by global warming, heating the ocean and melting glacial ice. But there are problems with these measurements and associated estimates. Recent research has shown that Antarctic, which holds most of the world’s ice, is or could or will contribute a very large amount of water to the sea. But, other recent studies show that some of the expected reduction in glacial size might not be happening at the rate previously estimated. At the moment, sea level is rising at a certain rate, and some research explains a good amount of that increase from melting ice, but other research takes that melting ice out of the equation and leaves that portion of the sea level rise unexplained, for now.

Past sea level change (up or down), prior to the industrial revolution when we started releasing all this greenhouse gas pollution, should give us a baseline against which to assess modern day measurements, and is an essential part of the process of understanding this critically important system. But it is difficult to measure sea level, at present or in the past. We can measure the current position of the sea at a given part of the continental margin by just going there and measuring it. Sea level over recent decades, going back in some places a few centuries, can be estimated using tide gage records. We can sink cores (or trenches) in relatively protected areas (such as behind barrier islands) and find organic material that would have been formed just below the surface of the sea, measure its elevation and date it, to give an estimate of sea level in the past. We can put the tide gage data and the coring data together and get a rough estimate of sea level change.

But that estimate is not just rough, but almost useless, without a lot of careful further study. As the organic material representing older sea levels is buried by later organic material or other sediment, it tends to be compressed and lower in elevation. The study of this process is many decades old, and this can be adjusted for, but it is complicated. The actual sea level at a given point along the coast depends partly on how big the ocean is at the moment (obviously) but also on the position and strength of major currents. At present, and many times in the past, the North Atlantic ocean is bunched up way out at sea because of the movement of currents. This lowers the sea level along the coast in many areas. But if these currents either move or change in their strength, this effect changes, and the coastal sea level goes up or down independently of the global sea level.

Wherever there were large glaciers, the land has been pushed down by the weight of the ice. After the glaciers melt away, the land rebounds. Where this happens along the coast, estimating global sea level from local sea level becomes quite complicated. Meanwhile at the outer edge of the glacial mass, the land is actually pushed up to compensate for the depression caused by the massive glaciers. This is called “forebuldge.” Forebuldge makes the sea level look lower than it should, until the forebuldge reduces and flattens out. Indeed, the rebound effects of enormous glaciers in Canada are still happening, changing the position of the shoreline of Hudson’s Bay fast enough that cabins built on the shore a century ago are now a long walk from the sea.

This is all manageable, and people have been working on collecting these data and figuring out how to use it since the 1960s. But now, this week, what may be the first research project to put most of these data together to provide a pretty good estimate of sea level variation over the last 3,000 years, has been published.

The key result from this paper is the graph at the top of this post.

Robert E. Koppa, Andrew C. Kemp, Klaus Bittermann, Benjamin P. Horton, Jeffrey P. Donnelly, W. Roland Gehrels, Carling C. Hay,b,k, Jerry X. Mitrovica, Eric D. Morrow, and Stefan Rahmstorf’s paper, “Temperature-driven global sea-level variability in the Common Era” (PNAS) does this:

We present the first, to our knowledge, estimate of global sea-level (GSL) change over the last ?3,000 years that is based upon statistical synthesis of a global database of regional sea-level reconstructions. GSL varied by ?±8 cm over the pre-Industrial Common Era, with a notable decline over 1000–1400 CE coinciding with ?0.2 °C of global cooling. The 20th century rise was extremely likely faster than during any of the 27 previous centuries. Semiempirical modeling indicates that, without global warming, GSL in the 20th century very likely would have risen by between ?3 cm and +7 cm, rather than the ?14 cm observed. Semiempirical 21st century projections largely reconcile differences between Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections and semiempirical models.

So now we have a much better idea of the nature of global sea level rise for a couple thousand years prior to human greenhouse gas pollution, and we have a firm demonstration of the effects of this pollution on sea level over the last century or so.

We are fortunate that one of the authors of this paper, Stefan Rahmstorf, is a blogger at Real Climate, where he wrote this post summarizing the original paper (though the original paper, linked to above, is pretty readable!).

Climate Central produced this graphic based on the paper:

GlobalSLR_cm

Of this, Rahmstorf says, “The fact that the rise in the 20th century is so large is a logical physical consequence of man-made global warming. This is melting continental ice and thus adds extra water to the oceans. In addition, as the sea water warms up it expands.”

How much will sea level rise by the end of the century?

In his post, Rahmstorf brings in a second study on sea level rise, also just published (see the RC post for more details). That research attempts to estimate the amount of sea level rise expectd by 2100. There are four separate studies, each using three different (RCP) assumptions about future human caused climate change, and each combination of study and model provides a range. In centimeters, the lowest numbers are around 25 (close to the amount that has already happened over the last century) and the highest numbers are around 130-150 (so, up to about five feet).

Rahmstorf appears to agree with my thinking on this, which is that these estimates don’t account for catastrophic deterioration of ice sheets and subsequent increase in melting, if such a thing results from what appears to be increasing instability of some of those glacial features. For example, huge parts of the Antarctic ice sheet are in the form of vast glacial rivers pinned in place by a precarious “grounding” of ice on rock near the mouth of those rivers.

If that grounding falls apart, the entire river can start to march to the sea very quickly, establishing a new grounding line upstream. It is possible that such a new grounding line is way upstream. As all that ice falls into the sea, it would likely expose high vertical cliff that would then start producing ice bergs at a very high rate for many years. There may be other features currently deep under the ice that would be exposed, such as pre-melted water near warm spots. In other words, the drainage of meltwater will not be made less efficient by such a collapse, but rather, more efficient, regionally and for a certain period of time. The point is, the impact on the rate of glacial melt of such events is pretty much unknown and very difficult to estimate.

Rahmstorf notes, “The projections on the basis of very different data and models thus yield very similar results, which speaks for their robustness. With one important caveat, however: the possibility of ice sheet instability, which for many years has been hanging like a shadow over all sea-level projections. While we have a pretty good handle on melting at the surface of the ice, the physics of the sliding of ice into the ocean is not fully understood and may still bring surprises. I consider it possible that in this way the two big ice sheets may contribute more sea-level rise by 2100 than suggested by the upper end of the ranges estimated by Mengel et al. for the solid ice discharge, which is 15 cm from Greenland and 19 cm from Antarctica. (The biggest contributions to their 131 cm upper end are 52 cm from Greenland surface melt and 45 cm from thermal expansion of ocean water.)”

He backs this up by reference to other recent studies showing that ice sheets have in the past broken up at surprisingly high rates.

One and a half meters, or five feet, of sea level rise within the lifetime of those born today is possible. Half of that is extremely likely. Double that may even be a possibility. This is expected to continue for centuries, even millennia, or until all the ice melts, whichever comes first.

How many things in your life originate from some thing that happened in the past? The invention of agriculture (that happened many times from about 10,000 to 4,000 years ago), the invention of writing (again, multiple times, thousands of years ago), the modern western system of government and law (depending on where you live, the Magna Carta, the US Constitution) hundreds of years ago. If you are religious, it is likely that your religion’s roots are thousands of years old. The establishment of property rights, water rights, all of that.

If human civilization exists, with some continuity with the present, 1,000 years from now, such a list will include the release of fossil carbon in the form of greenhouse gasses by the people of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. That was the event that caused the sea to rise and engulf so much of the fertile land, causing a major (if possibly slow moving) exodus of most of the settled people of the world. In a thousand years, after we’ve either stopped using fossil fuel, or didn’t but just used it all up, people will still be measuring for the rise of the sea that we are causing right now.

I don’t think they will be thanking us.

The Earth’s Surface Continues To Warm Because Of Human Greenhouse Gas Pollution

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Recently NASA GISS released the measurement of the Earth’s surface for January 2016. I added this latest measurement to the long term database (from 1880) and calculated the running 12 month average of surface temperatures. This is the resulting graph:

giss_12-month_moving_average

These are anomaly values, as indicated. January was the warmest month recorded in terms of anomaly, and it follows December 2015 as the previous warmest month. The top warmest anomalies in the entire NASA GISS database (going back to 1880) are listed below.Notice that all of these years are recent, and notice that the warmest and most recent months (from late 2015 through the present) are MUCH warmer than previously.

2016 JAN 113
2015 DEC 111
2015 OCT 106
2015 NOV 102
2007 JAN 95
2010 MAR 92
2002 MAR 90
2015 MAR 89
2014 SEP 89
1998 FEB 88
2010 APR 87
2015 FEB 86
2014 OCT 85
2014 MAY 85
2015 SEP 82
2015 JAN 81
2014 AUG 81
2013 NOV 80
2010 NOV 79
2005 OCT 79

Faith and climate change: A meteorologist’s view

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I don’t normally write about faith (I’m an atheist, I’d be bad at it), but I do often write about climate change. But my friend and colleague Paul Douglas happens to be an Evangelical Christian, Republican, and Rock Star Meteorologist. You’ve seen his work if you’ve seen the movies Jurassic Park or Twister. If you are from the Twin Cities area, you are probably still mourning his departure from WCCO TV, where he was famous for giving highly accurate weather forecasts, and acknowledging the realty of global warming.

Paul calls himself an albino unicorn, because he is a Republican and an Evangelical Christian who seriously respects, and understands, the science, and is very open about that. Paul is part of a small group of interested parties including me, John Abraham (at St. Thomas University), and meteorology expert Tenney Naumer, who stay in touch on a regular basis pointing out interesting meteorological events to each other so we can all keep up with happenings in this rapidly changing world, and passing back and forth ideas on how to communicate this information to the general public while at the same time keeping very true to the science.

Paul’s day job is to run Aeris weather, a high end very sophisticated meteorology company. This is one of a series of companies entrepreneur Douglas has created and developed into a success. He also blogs at the Star Tribune. If you live in the Twin Cities, this is where you get your short and long term weather predictions, if you are smart.

A note about that blog: Paul adds to every blog, after discussing the regional weather and the most interesting or important tropical storm or other untoward event happening elsewhere in the world, a listing of climate change related news stories, so this is a great place to keep up with what is going on in both those worlds of weather and climate change.

Paul also regularly gives talks on climate and meteorology to groups in the Twin Cities, and regularly appears on local TV and radio shows. In a way, he moonlights as a kind of therapist for many of us who live in this rugged and unforgiving climate, where for many days in the winter, there is nothing between us and the North Pole but a barbed wire fence. (A favorite expression of Paul’s.)

And, as part of that mission to speak with the public about climate change, retired Minnesota Public Radio host Gary Eichten interviewed albino unicorn Paul Douglas at a local Evangelical college about climate change.

The interview actually addresses climate change in general, addressing the “faith” side of it for only part of the interview. There is a lot of good information in the interview, and Paul does a great job of modeling how to speak of these issues to a presumably hostile audience.

Here is the interview/talk. Enjoy.

ADDED: Now available, a video of the talk:

Global Warming Coming To An Ice Fishing Contest Near You

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Over the last several years, ice fishing contests, which are a big deal in Minnesota, have been repeatedly cancelled due to insufficient ice thickness on the relevant lake. Some of these contests have been permanently cancelled because the annual cancelations were becoming more frequent. Just now, the Maple Lake Ice Fishing Derby has been cancelled. That’s bad.

But even more disturbing is this:

Ice conditions for the Eel Pout Festival have created enough concern to prompt vehicle restrictions, according to the Cass County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff Tom Burch says vehicle traffic on Walker Bay during the event will be prohibited, but with the following exceptions: snowmobiles and Class 1 & 2 ATVs.

All vehicles must be removed from the ice by noon on Friday. Motorized traffic is no allowed until Sunday at 10 a.m.

This is a big deal because the Eel Pout Festival is different from the previously canceled ice fishing events. All those previously cancelled events, including Maple Lake, are in Central Minnesota, not far from the Twin Cities. The Eel Pout festival is way the heck up north, in a region where even with global warming affected climate, the ice still normally forms hard and thick.

I assume that the problem with the ice up on Leech Lake, where Walker Bay is located, is problematic this year because of a combination of rising global surface temperatures caused by human released greenhouse gas pollution, plus added warmth from the current El Niño. In a way, we are looking at the effects of global warming in the future, in a decade or two, when the “normal” elevated (non El Niño) temperatures will catch up with the extra elevated temperature of the combined effects.

While we are on the subject of the Eel Pout, let me clarify a bit. The fish known as Eelpout (one word) is a marine fish that looks a little like an eel. There are about 300 species, they are bottom dwelling, and some live at a great depth. They are not the same fish as the Eel Pouts (two words) in Minnesota. The Minnesota Eel Pout is also known as the Burbot, and it is a fresh water Cod, the only Cod that lives in fresh water. It is also known as Ling, Coney-Fish, Lingcod, and owing to its somewhat slimy nature and tendency to wrap itself around your arm when pulled out of the water, Lawyer. (I assume this refers to a specific subset of lawyers, not all lawyers.)

It is very edible, I hear, though I’ve yet to eat one.

This is also an example of where Wikipedia gets it wrong. In the entry for “Eelpout” (one word) Wikipedia correctly describes what Ellpouts are, but then adds this, under the “popular culture” heading:

The Eelpout Festival that takes place in February in Walker, Minnesota, in the United States, celebrates the burbot, which is actually a cod-like fish misleadingly known locally as the eelpout

Bad Wiki. First of all, we spell the name of the fish differently (two words, not one word). Second, the Minnesota Burbot has been called the Eel Pout for a long time. Eel Pout, as well as Eelpout, are common terms, not scientific names, so of course there is some sloppiness. I don’t see Wikipedia saying it is wrong to call an Elk a Moose in Europe, do I?

Anyway, here is what the Eel Pout Festival looks like:

Hip-Hop Artist Baba Brinkman Crowdfunding Climate Change Album

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I’m not sure what an “album” is, but I think it is like a CD.

Anyway, if you don’t know who Baba Brinkman is, check this out. (he previously produced “The Rap Guide to Evolution.”)

Then, head on over to the Indiegogo site to see his project. This is likely to be a go, with your help. He’s a fourth of the way there already, and he has a lot of fans and supporters. I have no doubt that this so-called “album” will be great.

Also by Baba Brinkman:

  • The Rap Guide to Religion
  • The Rap Guide to Evolution
  • The Rap Guide to Evolution: Revised [Explicit]
  • The Rap Canterbury Tales
  • The Rap Guide to Wilderness
  • The Rap Guide to Human Nature [Explicit]
  • Dead Poets

    • How Did Climate Change Cause The Great More’Easter of 2016?

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    Storms like last weekend’s blizzard and widespread snowfall can happen, in theory, any winter, but large snowfall storms in the US Northeast have been significantly more common in recent years than in previous recorded history. Over the last few years we’ve seen these large snowfalls happen farther south than usual, as was the case with the 2016 Blizzard. Climate scientists are pretty sure that this blizzard was either outright caused or significantly enhanced (you really can’t tell the difference) by human caused global warming. How can a blizzard, a big cold thing, be caused by warming? Because climate is not a simple thing.

    Just trust me, this was an effect of global warming. Or, if you like, read on, and I’ll give you the gory details.

    There are two factors that needed to come together to make a storm into a large southern-offset blizzardy mess like this one. First, there needed to be cold air tracking farther south than usual, and this happened as a result of trade wind and jet stream meanderings which have become more common with climate change, and made more likely this year, probably, because of El Niño. Second, there needed to be more moisture in the air coming off the Atlantic Ocean. This happened last weekend, and during other recent storms over the last few years, because the Atlantic is much much warmer than it usually is in the immediate region of the coast. Warmer water provides more moisture to the atmosphere via evaporation, and that relationship is not linear. More sea surface warmth equals more more moisture.

    The Atlantic hasn’t been just a bit warmer. This region of the Atlantic has been anomalously very warm for several years and has been getting more warmer annually.

    There are two reasons for this extra warmth. One is pretty straight forward. Sea surface temperatures globally are warmer because of human caused greenhouse gas warming of the surface of the planet. This has been enhanced over recent months because of El Niño, but it is a larger and longer term phenomenon with El Niño warming riding on top of that overall increase. Any randomly chosen patch of the world’s ocean is likely to be warmer today than it was ten or twenty years ago.

    The second reason is a little more complex. Weather (and it’s big brother, climate) happen because of the uneven distribution of the Sun’s energy on the surface of the earth. Extra heat accumulates near the equator (which is pointing, relatively, more directly at the Sun), and this heat is redistributed through the movement of air and sea currents towards the poles. However, since the oceans and continents are not evenly or symmetrically distributed, or otherwise laid out to make this redistribution of heat efficient, this gets pretty complex. For example, the Pacific is huge while the Atlantic is narrower and restricted as one goes north. Notice also that the Indian Ocean is not connected directly to northern regions, only to the south, so extra heat builds up there and has to make its way towards both poles via long and convoluted currents.

    One result of this complexity is what we call the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This is sometimes referred to as the Atlantic Conveyer and people will sometimes use the term “Gulf Stream” to refer to part of that, but really, it is all more complex than that and not so easily labeled.

    Warm water that started near the Equator (including both in the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, via South Africa) moves north in the Atlantic, on the surface. Up in the North Atlantic, this warm water becomes relatively even warmer (since the air is cooler in the north) and passes as well into areas where the air may be relatively dry. This causes heat to leave the water carried by the current, and evaporation to take place. Evaporation not only cools the water, but makes it extra salty. Saltier water is denser, so the cooling, hyper-saline waters at the northern reaches of the currents sink to the bottom of the ocean, pulling even more of the north-flowing surface current with it. This is like the electric motor that turns a conveyor belt. The lower part of the “belt” is the saltier, colder water now flowing back south, in the opposite direction, towards equatorial regions where it can later re-emerge and warm up again.

    That is the simple version. If you just put water in a big place it will rotate because energy supplied by winds (or other currents) will be deflected by the Earth’s rotation, so you get, in the simple case, a counter-clockwise rotation (in the Norther Hemisphere). To the side of such a rotating masses of water, one tends to get counter-gyres (running clockwise). Trade winds push surface waters along, contributing to currents. Between the movement of the currents themselves, differential heat across the sea surface and at some depth, and air the currents, the surface of the ocean tends to not be very flat, though it looks rather flat from any given normal human vantage point. At present, the North Atlantic is mounded up in such as way that the sea surface is lower along the North American east coast than it would be were none of these things were happening.

    All this results in a big blob shaped area in the North Atlantic where the surface waters are relatively cold, into which warmer currents mostly from the south (including the Gulf Stream) flow, cooling, sinking, being part of the conveyor.

    What happens if you turn this conveyor off? For one thing, heat that is normally contributed to the atmosphere at northern latitudes as part of the process is no longer available to the various trade winds that pass over them. So, downwind regions (i.e., northern Europe) may experience cooling. Under certain conditions, this could cause a shift in climate in the direction of an Ice Age. We are currently experiencing such warming planet wide that this is not a possibility, though there is a famous movie in which this (rather unrealistically) happens.

    Another effect can be a change in the mounding of water around the North Atlantic, with an effective regional sea level rise (measurable in inches, probably) along the Northern Hemisphere east coast.

    Another effect is, of course, that the hot water moving north into the North Atlantic where it might otherwise cool gets stuck, almost like it is backed up, and becomes warmer and warmer.

    All of these effects can happen with a mere slowdown in the AMOC, not only if it stops completely, and we seem to have seen these effects.

    Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist who studies these things, has an excellent writeup about a slowing AMOC and its effects, here at RealClimate.

    The graphic at the top of this post is from his post. This shows sea surface temperatures across the world’s ocean as relative change caused by doubling the planet’s normal CO2 level. This is a model indicating that in the North Atlantic, there would be cooling in the far north, and extreme heating along the Northern Hemisphere’s east coast. So that is what the physics says is likely to happen in a warming world.

    Here is a portion of the Climate Reanalyzer daily summary showing today’s actual sea surface temperature anomalies (how far above or below a long term average the actual sea surface temperature is measured to be).

    Screen Shot 2016-01-25 at 12.35.38 PM

    Find the purple spots in the North Atlantic. That is the head of the AMOC, more or less, and here we have record low relative sea surface temperatures. Along the east coast are several blobs of red, showing near record or record high sea surface temperatures. There are stripes and blobs of very warm water all along the coast, made relatively warmer first by the simple fact that the sea surface is warmed by global warming, then made even more extra warm because of the recent slowing down of the AMOC. (Click through to see the whole globe, the scale, and to play with the data.)

    Why is the AMOC slowing down?

    First, note, that this is not a short term oddity of weather. Rahmstorf asserts that this is a long term condition.

    (1) The warm sea surface temperatures are not just some short-term anomaly but are part of a long-term observed warming trend, in which ocean temperatures off the US east coast are warming faster than global average temperatures.

    (2) Climate models show a “cold blob” in the subpolar Atlantic as well as enhanced warming off the US east coast as a characteristic response pattern to a slowdown of the AMOC.

    Stefan and other scientists have effectively argued that this slowdown is caused in large part by the addition of fresh water from melting glaciers in Greenland. The fresh water interferes with the process by which waters at the head of the AMOC becoming hyper-saline, and thus slows down the conveyor belt. There are probably also increases in freshwater flow from major rivers into the North Atlantic, also resulting from climate change, that contribute to this.

    Let me clarify something here in case there is some confusion. The cooling of the regions of the North Atlantic having to do with AMOC did not provide wintery conditions to cause this blizzard. That is something happening much father away. We may be seeing cooling effects in part of Europe because of this (I’m not discussing that here) but the Blizzard of 2016 (which we hopefully don’t bother to call “2016A” assuming there will not be another) was not hyped up because of that cooling, but rather, from the backed up surface warmth much nearer New England and the rest of the US East coast.

    The slowing down of the AMOC has been going on for decades, and seems likely to continue. It is not that clear what would happen if the AMOC simply shut down, or even if it could. Will the action simply move to a new latitude, or will some sort of conveyor system continue but with a very different configuration? Will additional slowdown of the AMOC cause important sea level rise in the US East? One thing that seems very likely is this. With increased surface warmth, and no reasonable expectation that warming will slow or reverse in the near future, Greenland will continue to contribute abundant fresh water to the region, and quite possibly, increased rainfall in major river basins will add even more freshening. The AMOC is not likely to stop slowing down, or to regain its strength.

    The slowing and other changes in the AMOC may be a qualitative and long term outcome of anthropogenic global warming. It seems likely that enhanced sea surface warmth off the US East Coast will be with us for the long term. A blizzard like the one we had over the weekend is much more manageable in regions that normally have frequent heavy snow storms, like Massachusetts and Upstate New York. If they happen now and then father to the south, that is a bit of a disaster, but if it is only now and then, it is not likely that we could or would do much about it.

    But if annual or nearly annual middle-Atlantic blizzards are now part of the “new normal” of our disrupted climate, then infrastructural changes may be required. Roads and parking lots, and even sidewalks, are constructed with the prospect of frequent snowfalls in mind in northern states. Maybe that is what we should be doing in the formerly less snowy regions along the Atlantic. Snow plows … lots of them … will be needed. Complex and annoying (and costly) parking rules to make room for snow clearing are common in snowy states. Should “snow emergency” procedures and parking rules be set up for the mid-Atlantic?

    People will have to learn, either the easy way or the hard way, that during a blizzard warning, one does not simply venture out onto the highways. Minnesotans and northern New Englanders and everyone in between keep blizzard kits in their cars. These are life saving items for when you do get stuck for 30 hours on a highway in the middle of nowhere. People who commute to Washington DC may consider this inexpensive investment. And so on.

    Finally, will there be another Snopocalypse this winter, somewhere in the US? I think not. With El Nino, things are warming up, and even in the usually blizzardly places, like New England or around the Great Lakes, I suspect we’ll have more slush and rain than deep snow. But you never know. On the other hand, global warming and El Niño enhanced storminess and raininess could cause more flooding, both inland and in coastal regions. But climate science denying Senator Jim Inhofe may have to wait until next winter to get a new snowball.

    More’easter Jonas Looks Like The Real Deal (UPDATED Storm shifts to the north)

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    Friday AM Update: Overall the storm has shifted north. Washington DC is still on track to have something close to two feet of snow in the city, more to the west. The predicted snowfall for New York City, the city that eats meteorologists, is increasing, and The City may see a foot or more, with closer to two feet to the northwest. DC will have its most intensive snowfall during the night on Friday, while New York City will have most of its snow falling during the day on Saturday.

    With this northward shift, Boston is likely to get more snow too, possibly over a foot. Snow will start there during the afternoon on Saturday and continue through Sunday AM and early PM.

    Wave and storm surge erosion with winds gusting to 50 MPH along the coast is still expected, especially along coastal New Jersey, Long Island, southern New England, Cape Cod, and down south across the Delmarva Peninsula. Normal tides are strong this time of month. Expect power outages here and there.

    Regardless of the apparently senseless and, frankly, mean spirited comments we see from some of the climate science denialists (i.e., that blizzards have happened before therefore…) it is simply true that most of the big storms that have hit this area since good record have occurred in just the last few years. That’s the observation. These storms are made worse by global warming enhanced sea surface temperatures. That’s part of the mechanism. Changes in jet stream patterns have also probably played a role in both the concentration of moisture and the length of storms, and their tracks. So, yes, this is a global warming enhanced storm that earns an extra merit badge for having a bit of extra energy from El Nino.

    See THIS for more about the science behind the predictions and the storm itself.

    A quick update (Thursday 10:30PM Central). Not much change in the overall pattern, but the “most likely” amount of snow for DC and environs has increased. You’all are likely to get way over a foot, possibly 20 inches or so, maybe more. The minimum is 9 inches. That’s not too likely. Overall, predicted snowfall amounts are increased. New York is expected to receive a half a foot or more, but as I note below this is hard to predict for that area. The estimate of snow for Boston has gone down, most likely an inch or so. But, that estimate has a fat tail, and it could be much more in the Boston area or East/Central Mass (up to 10 inches). Coastal flooding in New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and parts of Virginia are still expected.

    I had previously mentioned Jonas, the storm about to bear down on the US East Coast. I cautioned that we should be open to a lot of possible outcomes, and to realize that prediction of exact snowfall amounts in a given area are very difficult with this sort of storm. Here, I’ll repeat that warning. If you see a big blob of predicted snow on a weather map, you can be pretty sure that if you are within or near that blob, you’ll get snow. But if you look at the exact locations of 12″ snow here, or 6″ snow there, and expect that to be accurate, than please contact me off line, I have nice bridge to sell you.

    However, as the storm approaches the predictions get more reliable. In this case, multiple weather models have been in line with each other all along, and the convergence on a big storm with certain characteristics is emerging. The storm will affect land areas staring during the day Friday, and continue through the weekend, depending on your location.

    What will happen in Washington DC?

    One of the big questions is what will happen in DC. At the moment, some of the standard weather services are predicting five or six inches from between some time Friday and early Sunday in the DC metro. This is conservative, and if you are ramping up your expectations about this storm but are not going to be in the DC area, keep this in mind so later you can be all surprised at a larger amount. But if you are living or working in DC, you need to know that other highly reliable sources, such as the National Weather Service, are suggesting a larger amount.

    Sticking with the idea that snowfall prediction is a game of probabilities, I offer this EXPERIMENTAL prediction method showing possible snowfall for a few spots in DC:

    Screen Shot 2016-01-21 at 8.24.11 AM

    It is pretty obvious how to read this. This information shows that there could be as little as 8 inches across the DC area, but as much as 30 inches. The chance of the snow on the ground adding up to over 18 inches is better than 50-50, meaning that the chances of there being a mere half of this large amount (the 30 inch apocalyptic number) is also 50-50. There is about a 20% chance that the total snow will be less than a foot. This means, of course, that the good money is on a total accumulation of over a foot, possibly a lot over a foot.

    In a place like DC, over a foot and over two feet are not that different. Both are city-shutting amounts.

    By the way, I’m hearing rumors that in the greater DC area, out in Virginia and such, there was some icing and snow over the last 24 hours that the authorities in charge decided not to plow or treat, so driving conditions in the area are currently very bad. Just rumors, but from credible sources. Maybe the snow plow people are saving up their resources for the big one. (See this!)

    Will New York City get much snow?

    Yesterday it was looking like New York might get a few inches. However, overnight, various model projections have started to show a big lump of snow on or near New York, suggesting that the storm might have a bigger impact there. Right now, the National Weather Service is saying that there may be 8-12 inches of accumulation in New York.

    New York is tricky because it has a strong urban heat island effect. Also, it is adjacent to not one, but two seas, and can be quite windy. Also, while New York has a lot of people in it, and the “Greater New York Area” is huge, overlapping large portions of three states and several counties (at least a dozen), when people go and look at the snowfall in New York City, they look at downtown Manhattan, and that is a tiny area (comparatively) that happens to be situated in a way that makes weather prediction extra hard. It is very common for a substantial snowfall predicted for New York to end up being nothing, or an inch or two. So, expect the unexpected. It is not unreasonable to assume a better outcome for The City than the forecasters suggest. But it may not be wise to rely on that assumption.

    Will Boston get much snow?

    In a way, Boston is even worse than New York. At the larger scale, Boston has a sort of barrier island, Cape Cod, which can influence some of the weather that comes its way, but Cape Cod is very far away covers only part of the sea in that area. Most storms sneak around it from the northeast. Nor’easters are not named as such for no reason.

    Boston is a very small city surrounded by many, many other cities, that are together called “Boston” as in “I lived in Boston” but actually lived in Somerville or Medford or something. Also, Boston is in a basin (the “Boston Basin”) snuggled up to the harbor and Mass Bay, and the highlands rise quickly (but not too much) around it, so it is not at all uncommon for Boston to get one inch of slush proceeded by some rain, while Lexington and Concord (commuting bedroom suburbs of Boston) get several times that.

    And, in this case, the northern extent of More’Easter* Jonas is somewhere around Boston but nobody can say for sure yet.

    The National Weather Service is suggesting that the worst case, but unlikely, scenario for the Greater Boston Area is 5-6 inches, the most likely 2-3 inches, but with a distinct possibility of zero. The Cape and Islands, and southern Rhode Island and SE Mass may get 6-8 inches. So, for that region, snowfall wise, just a typical winter snow but windy.

    Where will the biggest accumulations be?

    The biggest accumulations of snow are likely to be inland, at somewhat higher elevations, focusing around a couple of points. Here’s a map I cribbed from Paul Douglas’ blog:

    No, wait, here is a more recent updated version, read the discussion below with that in mind:

    Screen Shot 2016-01-21 at 11.45.21 AM

    Technically, since over a foot of snow is a lot, the answer to this question is “everywhere form Long Island across most of New Jersey, half of Pennsylvania, Much of Virginia and West Virginia, and Maryland.” But, there seems to be two major centroids of heaviest accumulation being predicted, one in New Jersey south of New York City, and the other wet of Washington across Maryland and the Virginia-West Virginia border. But, as I’ve now said a half dozen times or more, these sorts of snowfall projections are notoriously inaccurate at any level of detail. If you live anywhere in the area of this map bounded by the yellow stripe, expect snow. If you are in or near the red and purple zones, there is a chance you will be snowbound. So, run out to the store now with all the other people and get stuff.

    The big problem with Jonas may be the wind

    But when you do get to the store, if you want to be a True Survivalist, don’t get frozen food or anything that requires electricity to prepare. And get extra batteries. And when you get home, do your laundry so you can get that done before your power goes out. The heavy snow amounts have the potential of knocking down power lines, of course, but there will also be windy conditions during this blizzard, and that will very likely knock a few wires off their poles. If this happens in many places over a large area, a simple outage that could be fixed in a few hours may take much longer. Between roads being closed because of snow and a high demand for repairs, some outages could last much longer than average, maybe even a day or a few days in the worst case. So be ready for that.

    Coastal Erosion

    My friend Paul Douglas referred to this storm as roughly like a “tropical storm with snow”.* It isn’t really a tropical storm, as he notes, but it is like one in the sense that there will be strong coastal winds and, owing to the winds and very low pressure, a storm surge in some areas.

    The storm surge may be most severe between the central New Jersey coast and the Chesapeake. However, the effects of a storm surge are highly local. So, for instance, the Delaware coast, because of the shape of the coast line and its position in the maw of the fetch, may experience high water. Small embayments along the Jersey coast may see very high local surges. There will also be high water in the same areas where Superstorm Sandy rose up to flood New York City and nearby New Jersey, but the height of those waters will not be as bad as during that storm.

    The other local phenomenon that determines the severity of a storm surge is, of course, local elevation. Areas with low relief behind the strandline facing the ocean may see several feet of water washing inland, and serious damage to property and natural areas. Places where the land rises quickly behind the beaches will still be affected by wind and spray (expect to see a lot of damaged or dead trees in some areas next spring form the salt) but structures and roads would be less affected. Pay close attention to what your local authorities are saying. At this point, though, the storm surges are expected to cause possibly record-book altering floods. From Paul:

    Unseasonably warm water in the Gulf Stream will fuel rapid intensification and pressure falls, a partial vaccuum that will pull air into the core of this developing Nor’Easter, whipping up high winds and pounding surf; the rough equivalent of a wintertime tropical storm (without the warm core). Here’s an excerpt from WXshift: “…On Saturday, powerful winds in excess of 60 mph could whip up waves that could reach 30 feet. As they come ashore, beaches will take a pounding and face widespread erosion. Models also show a current storm surge of around 5 feet coming ashore with Saturday’s high tide. In Cape May, N.J., the current forecast high tide mark on Saturday evening would be the third-highest on record while Atlantic City would come in at 10th in the record books, according to Stephen Stirling at NJ.com. That could push water inland and cause widespread property damage…”

    Bottom line: If you live or work in a place within the range of this storm that has been storm-flooded in the past, assume this is a possibility this time.

    UPDATE: The storm surge and coastal flooding is starting to ramp up as one of the more likely negative outcomes here. Paul Douglas just sent me these words of warning: “I’m increasingly concerned about the threat of widespread coastal flooding from this super-sized Nor’easter. Blizzard and 50+ mph winds arriving during full moon with sustained onshore winds creating a 4-7 foot storm surge capable of lowland flooding and beach erosion. Facilities that were impacted by Sandy in 2012 may experience problems with this storm.”

    The National Weather Service in New York is warning that this may be one of the top five flooding events on record in the area.

    THE MOST SIGNIFICANT COASTAL FLOODING MAY COCUR AT HIGH TIDE SATURDAY EVENING. So check your tide chart.

    More’Easter*

    So, when Paul made mention of the “Tropical Storm with Snow” to some mutual colleagues, the idea came up that this sort of storm needed a new name (Snowicane, or something like this). I suggested that during the last two decades, there have been more Nor’easters, with more moisture and precipitation, covering more geographical areas (mainly to the south) than in the past. So, maybe the term “More’easter” would be appropriate. Paul anointed the idea, and now you can use the term as well, if you like. I don’t expect the meteorology textbooks to be updated any time soon, but who knows?

    A quick word about climate change and El Niño

    Yes, this storm is getting its extra moisture and power from climate change with a does of El Niño added in. The driver of this wetness (which will be snowness) is very high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic. El Niño influences this, but frankly, the sea surface temperatures off shore right now are not a lot different than they were last January, when a huge More’easter blanketed New England in a big pile of snow. This is a global warming enhanced storm.

    Yes, we are avoiding an Ice Age, but this has been obvious for years

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    A new paper just published in Nature has made a bit of a stir because it has been interpreted as suggesting that global warming has the benefit of avoidance of an Ice Age that was just about to happen. However, the paper does not actually say that, and we already knew that we may have avoided the next ice age, possibly by human activities dating back to the 19th century or before. Also, the paper actually addresses a different question, an important one, but one that may be a bit esoteric for may interested parties.

    First, the esoteric question. Simply put, over the last two million years or so, the Earth has gone through a couple of dozen cycles that have ice ages at one end and very warm periods (such as the one we were in in the 19th century) at the other end. The first several cycles were modest, but the most recent have been extreme, with the cold periods involving the growth of major continental glaciers big enough, for example, to cover most of Canada and a chunk of the US. The current warm period, enhanced by anthropogenic global warming, is probably already warmer than the previous really warm periods, and over the next couple of decades will certainly be what has been called a “super-interglacial” with temperatures consistently being above anything during this entire glacial-interglacial cycle.

    This cycling of climate is linked to a cycle of how much of the Sun’s energy falls on the earth, when, and where. The simple version of this arises from the fact that land masses, where continental glaciers can form, are concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere. Continental glaciers have their own cooling system (by being bright and reflecting away sunlight, mainly) so once they form they tend to be self sustaining. But it is difficult for then to form to begin with because, well, the Earth is usually too warm. But, if Northern Hemisphere summers are chilled down sufficiently several years in a row, these glaciers can start to form, and this can be part of the onset of a new glacier.

    ____________
    Current and recommended books on climate change.
    ____________
    The Earth wobbles as it rotates. The elliptical orbit of the Earth around the Sun varies in how elongated it is. The location of the Earth on this elliptical orbit during a particular moment in the seasonal round changes over time (so every now and then the solstice, for instance, happens when the Earth is maximally distant from the sun). These three factors change in a regular cycle over different time periods. Every now and then all three factors cause the following thing to be true: late June, the longest and thus sunniest period of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, is also the time when the Earth is farthest from the sun on an elliptical orbit that is as elongated as it ever gets, but the Earth has wobbled up so that the Northern Hemisphere is not as pointed towards the Sun as it could be. When this happens, Northern Hemisphere summers have a minimal amount of the Sun’s energy.

    But that difference is probably not enough to start an ice age, and the opposite times, when the Northern Hemisphere’s summers are maximally sunlight, are probably not enough warmer than other periods to kill off an ice age.

    During the 1970s and early 80s, the cycles of Sun’s energy variation caused by these orbital quirks were reconsidered (it was a 19th century observation) and correlated with recently obtained isotope data from sea cores indicating glacial cycles. They matched. More NH summer extra sunlight happened during interglacials pinned down by the isotopic data, and NH summer reduced sunlight matched in time with the glacial periods. But, over subsequent years, research tended to show that the changes in sunlight and glacial activity did not correlate exactly. Rather, other causes of the onset or melting of glaciers seemed to be other things.

    Over time we have come to realize that the orbital effects, known as Milankovitch Cycles, probably determine the potential for the Earth to be in a glacial period vs. an interglacial period, but other factors actually push the climate system into these new states.

    This is like so many other things in nature. You have the right genes to develop perfect pitch, but that does not make you a musician. Growing up in an environment that would encourage one to be a musician is not sufficient to make you a great musician. Having perfect pitch and a music-friendly environment and a few other things, all together in for the same person, might create a David Bowie. Or not. But given millions of people, there will be hundreds of great musicians, and most of them will have most of these factors in place.

    The current research is a study that relates atmospheric CO2 changes and Milankovitch changes, and it may be an important contribution to understanding this complex system. I’ve not thought about the paper enough to say this (or not say it), but that is what the paper is about.

    Meanwhile, years ago, back in the late 1960s and through the 1970s, paleoclimate experts like John Imbrie and JM Mitchell and others pointed out that greenhouse gasses would likely bring on a “super interglacial” that would obviate an ice age that might otherwise occur very soon. They also noted that after thousands of years following the burning of the last available fossil fuel, or the curtailment of this insane practice, the CO2 added to the atmosphere would likely cycle back into solid form, and the next time orbital geometry matched up with other stuff, we could have our ice age again.

    More recently, Bill Ruddiman looked at human activities in recent history and suggested that land clearing practices associated with agriculture, and the early burning of fossil fuels, was sufficient to put off an ice age.

    Today we know that the cycling in and out of Ice Ages over the last million years or so is associated with atmospheric CO2 levels well within the range of 200ppm to 300ppm. So, I would guess that once we passed around 300ppm we left the likelihood of an ice age behind. Indeed, it is possible that had we not done that, we might have eventually figured out that we should do it, to avoid an ice age.

    But enough is enough. The fact that you like your hamburger cooked does not mean that therefore you should cook it at 10,000 degrees C for a year. You cook it the right amount. More than that ruins it. We might benefit from “cooking” the Earth just a little bit to avoid an ice age (and yes, we do want to avoid an ice age), but we don’t want to overcook the Earth. We passed annual an average CO2 concentration of 400ppm a few months ago. The hamburger, and our goose, is being overcooked.

    One outcome of the new research is to suggest that without human perturbation of the climate, we would have skipped this ice age anyway. This assertion is the reason I’m reserving judgement on this paper. I wonder if all the appropriate factors have been taken into account, because I find this assertion difficult to believe. But, I’m not going to make an argument based on incredulity. I’ll just note my incredulity, as someone who has studied Pleistocene climate change, and consider getting back to you on this at a later time.

    The paper further suggests that current burning of CO2 will extend that period of time to the next Ice age by double, and that “Our simulations demonstrate that under natural conditions alone the Earth system would be expected to remain in the present delicately balanced interglacial climate state, steering clear of both large-scale glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere and its complete deglaciation, for an unusually long time.”

    So, when media report that this study suggests that anthropogenic global warming has put off an ice age, they are talking about shifting a 50,000 year delay to the next ice age (without human effects) to a 100,000 year delay. This would be a new idea, because we were thinking that we had put off an ice age that was just about to happen (over the next centuries). So, the paper actually says nearly the exact opposite of what the press says it says. How could this happen? Can’t imagine…

    The Paper:

    Ganopolski, A. R. Winkelmann,& H. J. Schellnhuber. 2016. Critical insolation–CO2 relation for diagnosing past and future glacial inception. Nature 529, 200–203 (14 January 2016) doi:10.1038/nature16494.

    The Atlantic Tropical Storm Season Is Over. Except Alex.

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    Tropical Storm Alex has formed in the Atlantic ocean. It is not entirely unprecedented to have a tropical storm form totally off season like this, but it is very rare. This happened mainly because of record high sea surface temperatures in the region.

    The sea surface temperature is not enough to make a hurricane. But you know what they say about the weather — under conditions of global warming — wait a few years and that will happen.

    Increasingly the world’s oceans are losing track of their tropical storm seasons. Expect a future where tropical cyclones (hurricanes, etc.) can form over a much larger area and across a much longer range of time.

    I usually don’t post this until June or so, but since the first storm of the year happened about six months early … this is the list of storm names for the Atlantic Basin, staring with the one currently in use.

    Alex (active)
    Bonnie (unused)
    Colin (unused)
    Danielle (unused)
    Earl (unused)
    Fiona (unused)
    Gaston (unused)
    Hermine (unused)
    Ian (unused)
    Julia (unused)
    Karl (unused)
    Lisa (unused)
    Matthew (unused)
    Nicole (unused)
    Otto (unused)
    Paula (unused)
    Richard (unused)
    Shary (unused)
    Tobias (unused)
    Virginie (unused)
    Walter (unused)

    Alex is not expected to turn into a hurricane.

    The Arctic is Hot: New minimum sea ice cover for the date

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    … and not in a good way.

    The Arctic has, of course, been warming in step with anthropogenic global warming, plus more. This phenomenon has probably increased disruption to global weather systems, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, over the last decade or so.

    But something somewhat novel is happening this year, presumably as a result of global warming combined with a strong El Nino. Storms are bringing extra warm conditions to the Arctic. A few days ago, the North Pole was above freezing, and over the next few days we are expecting more warm conditions in the Arctic Circle. See this post by Eric Holthaus.

    Figuring that interesting things might be happening in the Arctic, I had a look at the National Snow and Ice Data Center interactive graphic showing Arctic Sea ice cover now and over time. The graphic is at the top of the post. It turns out that Arctic Sea ice is at an historic low for this date, and in fact, looks to be flatlining, at least for now. I presume the ice will expand again shortly when the current influx of warm air to the region subsides, but it will be interesting to see if we end up with a new minimal maximum of sea ice.

    Florida Beaches Invaded By Portuguese Men-of-War

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    Warm waters around Florida have resulted in a growth of the population of Portuguese Man-of-War, or should that be Portuguese Men-of-War, an organism commonly confused with jellyfish (because they look just like jellyfish).

    The PMOWs have a sting, roughly equivalent in pain level to a bee sting, and best treated at such. Do not urinate on your PMOW sting (save your urine for an actual jellyfish sting).

    There are reports of many PMOWs washing up, with numerous swimmers suffering stings. The stinging tentacles, even after they fall off, are a hazard, and barefoot beachcombers can accidentally step on them. Many Florida beaches have warnings in effect.

    Sea Surface temperatures in florida are high:

    Screen Shot 2016-01-06 at 8.43.36 AM

    And relatively high compared to historical data (images from Google Map with Climate Reanalyzer overlays):

    Screen Shot 2016-01-06 at 8.46.34 AM

    Photograph above by Julia Laden, taken this morning.

    The Irony of Tim Jones: Climate Disruption in Missouri and GOP Politics

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    By now you are probably aware of the major flooding that happened over the last several days in Missouri. Larry Lazar gave us a guest post detailing his personal experiences in Eureka, where the flooding was extensive. This flooding is not over, but is simply moving down stream in the Mississippi watershed. It will take several days before this is over.

    We are long past the days when one can honestly say “you can’t attribute a given weather event to climate change.” Climate is weather long term, and weather is climate in the here and now. Climate has changed because of anthropogenic global warming. It is simply incorrect to say that the two are unrelated.

    With a warmer atmosphere, there is more water vapor aloft. Changes in the relationship between the tropics and the Arctic, that relationship being a key determinate in how weather works, have changed how weather patterns develop. These changes cause precipitation to clump up, so some areas get more than the usual amount of rain while other areas experience less. These changes have also slowed down the movement of storms, so wet weather hangs around longer in one area.

    More rain, clumped, and slowed down, means more frequent and more severe flooding, and we have seen plenty of that this past year, and a general increase over the last couple of decades. The increase in severity and frequency of flooding that was manifest just now in Missouri is the result of human caused disruption of atmospheric systems and this chaotic weather literally rains down on us from that atmosphere.

    Tim Jones is no longer in elected office, yet continues to indicate that he is on his Twitter page.
    Tim Jones is no longer in elected office, yet continues to indicate that he is on his Twitter page.
    Now we turn to an irony, and an exemplar of an important and troubling phenomenon. The irony is that one small piece of the loss of property this flooding caused in Missouri was severe damage to the campaign headquarters of former Missouri House representative (District 110) Timothy Jones. Jones is a long time climate science denier. He is no longer in elected office, by his own choice, but Jones wrote that as he plans “… to continue my public service in the future, I am keeping all options open for 2018 and beyond to serve our state and our nation.” That facility is also used, according to Jones and others, to host Republican political meetings and events.

    That is the irony, obviously, but I’ll develop the ironic nature of this small event more in a bit. The phenomenon that is so troubling is the concerted effort of politicians and others to work against addressing climate change. This is not a new thing. The fossil fuel industry, large players such as the Koch brothers, and famous politicians such as Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe have been working to discredit climate science and stop the shift towards clean (non-fossil) fuels for decades. Tim Jones has been and is a local player in that effort.

    Let me be clear. We knew about climate change decades ago. In the 1970s, we also learned how precarious our national security and economic system can be in its reliance on fossil fuels.

    There was a brief time back in the 70s when efficiency in fuel use was seen as a good thing, even a necessary thing. There were changes in zoning laws, speed limits on our interstates, automobile efficiency standards, appliance efficiency ratings, and all that. But around the same time and subsequently, “green” approaches to energy, slower speed limits, efficiency in building practices, and the development of solar and wind energy became conservative (read: Republican) issues but not in a good way.

    As our nation transformed into not just a two party system, but a two ideology system, the right has taken up the challenge, effectively, of putting the kibosh on pretty much every move an individual, company, industry, public agency, or government might make to meaningfully reduce the use of fossil fuels and, in so doing, reduce our contribution to ever-increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in our atmosphere.

    Imagine for a moment what might have happened if we treated both energy and climate change using that good old fashioned American approach that gave us victory over fascism in World War II, the Manhattan Project (for better or worse), and several trips to the moon. After 40 years of effort, leading the world in similar efforts, we would not be at 400+ parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere. Simply put, had we stepped up back when we first realized the need and benefits of so doing, we would not have be experiencing the climate disruption we are now experiencing.

    Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 1.58.17 PMToday’s climate disruption was underwritten by, enhanced by – really, caused by – climate change science deniers and green energy opponents like Tim Jones and his ilk. They didn’t just question the science or make a fair stab at supporting oil and coal interests. They made disruptive climate change happen.

    So, when Tim Jones finds his vaguely labeled headquarters destroyed by a flood that would have been unlikely decades ago but that today is virtually inevitable, and that will repeat frequently, it is all about chickens. What kind of chicken? The kind that occasionally come home. To roost.

    Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 1.59.22 PMI would not have even noticed that Jones’ headquarters had been destroyed had he not done something that is astonishingly insensitive and inappropriate. Jones is a popular and powerful Republican, statewide, in Missouri. He has raised a lot of money. As of January 2015 Jones had nearly one million dollars in his campaign coffers. Given the ruined status of his headquarters, it would be a simple matter to fund repair and renovations beyond whatever insurance coverage he had on the place. But instead of simply paying the piper that he himself helped invite to the party, he started a Go Fund Me campaign so that his supporters, who had suffered through this flood, could pay for those repairs.

    Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 2.00.26 PMTim Jones’ Go Fund Me campaign is a poignant reminder of the situation. He has denied the human role in climate, he now denies that the flood that destroyed his offices is related to climate change, and now he is denying responsibility for the fiscal loss.

    He is asking his former constituents and current supporters, who themselves have lost about two dozen loved ones and family members to flood related deaths and as yet uncounted millions of dollars in property, to buy him some new drywall. What a guy.

    Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 2.01.41 PMBut wait, there’s more. Tim Jones has left public office for now, though he may return. But what is he doing exactly?

    At the time that he announced he would no longer be seeking election, Jones accepted a job as a senior policy fellow with the Hammond Institute for Free Enterprise, housed at Lindenwood University. Lindenwood announced, within a day of Jones’ announcement that he would be joining Hammond, the award of a $2 million grant from … wait for it … the Charles Koch Foundation.

    Screen Shot 2016-01-05 at 2.02.39 PMMeanwhile, since the flood, Jones has been making quite a stink on his Twitter feed, calling people who understand that climate change is real and important various names such as “Eco-Nazi,” “Libnuts,” etc. These offensive tweets are not important … that’s what people do on twitter. But seeing them interspersed with tweets begging for donations to fix up his headquarters is more than a little annoying, knowing that he has about a million bucks in the bank.

    I contacted Larry Lazar, who wrote the personal account of flooding in Eureka I mention above, to get his impression of Jones and related matters.

    First I wanted to know if Larry had any inkling as to why Jones, if he is not in office, still uses the title “speaker” as part of his Twitter handle. Larry told me that a friend of his opined, “He doesn’t want to relinquish the title just as a President doesn’t lose his/her title. I saw this in a twitter conversation with him and someone else months ago.” This makes sense given some of his tweets today, in which he announced the development, at his flooded headquarters, of a sort of “Tim Jones Library.” Imagine that.

    In one of his Tweets, Jones suggested that those concerned with climate change quiet down and go away, noting that the flood had happened five days ago and was no big deal. I asked Larry how he felt to learn that the state rep who formerly represented him indicated that the flood was not an important event. He told me,

    My immediate thought upon seeing his flood damaged office was “What will it take for him to get it?” Tim has been an outspoken denier of climate science since he has been in office. While he has no expertise in climate science he has shared his views in opposition of climate science for many years via conservative radio and social media like Twitter and Facebook.

    I should be shocked, but I know Tim’s opposition to climate change science all too well as he has been very active on conservative radio and social media – like twitter. I was?still surprised that he could be so insensitive given all of the devastation that our community and many others in Missouri have experienced. Most of these folks are uninsured and don’t have financial resources available to them like the wealthy do. I thought he could at least pretend to be concerned ?about the folks, many of whom have voted for him and supported him financially, that?have?may have lost their homes and?other property.

    Let’s look at the bigger picture for a moment. Missouri is a pretty red state. How well a clean energy project does in a given state has a lot to do with the legislature and prevailing powerful interests. I was wondering what was going on in Missouri in this area. I asked Larry if the Missouri state government, where Tim Jones and a lot of similar minded Republicans have served or do serve to represent the people, has been doing what it needs to do to make it easier for individual citizens and companies to use cleaner energy sources. Larry gave me a long and thoughtful answer to that question, which I’ll pass on in its entirety.

    Missouri gets 80% of our energy from dirty coal – which is imported from Wyoming. Neighboring states like Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska are harnessing renewable energy sources at much higher rates than Missouri. I often wonder if the fact that St. Louis is the world headquarters for 5 coal companies, including Peabody, the world’s largest coal company, contributes to our continued reliance on coal. Peabody, as well as Ameren, which is Missouri’s largest energy utility, are both large contributors to political campaigns – for both parties. The result of this unholy alliance is that Missouri has very few incentives, both at the individual, and corporate levels, to switch to cleaner energy.

    I wish Missouri could lead on climate. If only Missouri leaders would recognize the great economic opportunities that exist for entrepreneurs, businesses and individuals by leading on climate change instead of clinging to denial that, frankly, is absurd. We have outstanding scientific expertise in our universities and businesses as well as hard-working and intelligent people. Why not leverage these resources and put Missouri in a leadership position on climate? Let Missourians go to work on climate. We can solve this – and Missouri should lead.

    I would also ask Missouri leaders to reflect on what their legacy will be. In 20, 30 or 50 years what will their children and grandchildren say about them? What will be in the history books about what actions they took, or didn’t take, on climate change and other issues back in the early decades of the 21st century? Did they act upon what many scientists say is humankind’s greatest challenge or did they persist in denial and delay, apparently for the benefit of a few exceptionally wealthy contributors to their campaigns?

    Thanks to Larry Lazar for his help in figuring this all out, and thanks to Tim Jones for being such a great example of what is wrong with this country.

    Oh by the way: Republican Politics in Missouri

    Not directly related to the issue at hand, but very relevant to the state of Republican politics in the Show Me state, is this pair of suicides and related political intriquge, antisemitism, and as Rachel Meadow calls it, Shakespearian Tragedy. This is the first story in the March 30th, 2015 Rachel Maddow Show:

    How warm was 2015, how warm will 2016 be?

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    The year that just finished, 2015, was the warmest year recorded in the instrumental record. The actual data for December is not officially available yet, but my friend and colleague John Abraham keeps track of the global surface temperature daily and has done an amazing job at estimating the final temperature anomaly value that is eventually reported in each of several databases. He has provided a graph using his estimated value, above.

    There are two major contributing factors, maybe three depending on how you count everything, to 2015 being the warmest year. The main factor is, of course, global warming. The Earth’s surface temperature is going up because of the Greenhouse Effect, and along with that, we are seeing remarkable climate disruption, including floods, other inclement weather, and a host of problems. On top of this, the last part of 2015 saw a strong El Niño, the strongest recorded in historic documents. This weather event, which involves the departure of ocean-stored heat in the Pacific into the atmosphere, is continuing, though it will likely peak soon and begin to decline (but see below). That is all we need, really, to explain 2015, but there may be a third factor that overlaps with those two worth singling out. Some areas of the world’s oceans, including parts of the Atlantic and the Pacific (outside the usual Pacific El Niño warming effect), have been exceptionally warm on the surface. This is really just part of the whole anthropogenic global warming thing, but seems more extreme this year. In other words, it seems as though the ocean is putting more stored heat into the atmosphere than just that part that El Niño contributes, and the surface temperature measurements include sea surface temperature.

    How warm will 2016 be? Playing the odds, it would always be a good bet that the next year will be warmer than the current year, on average, because global warming continues. However, even as the surface temperature trends upwards over time, the actual measurements from year to year wiggle up and down a fair amount owing to a number of factors. So, on average, if you bet on warming for each subsequent year you would overall win, but you might lose that bet during some years. (In fact, you could lose your shirt if warming happens to occur with infrequent large spikes interspersed among years that see modest cooling, so be careful!)

    However, 2016 is actually more than 50-something percent likely to be warm compared to 2015. One reason is that El Nino will continue for the first part of 2016, and the effect that El Niño has on surface temperature is delayed. The peak effect occurs several months after the peak of the El Niño itself. So, if El Niño peaks in February, for example, we will have global warming + El Niño enhancement through early summer. So at least half of the months of 2016 will be very warm. There is a very good chance, then, that 2016 will be warmer even than 2015.

    Mark Boslough, a physicist who writes quite a bit about Global Warming, has made a bet along these lines. He is not betting that 2016 will be warmer than 2015, but he is betting on the long term upward trend of the Earth’s surface temperatures. He’s really putting his money where his mouth is, by the way, to the tune of 25,000 US dollars. The details of his bet are here. So far, as far as I know, none of those in the climate science denial world have taken him up.