Tag Archives: Global Warming

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.

Putting the “Ex” in “Exxon”: AGU asked to dump big oil sponsorship

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It is all about the honest conversation. And the dishonest conversation.

Corporate Funding of the Research Endeavor: Good

Corporations have an interest in research. They use this research for profit or to minimize liability. Some corporations have their own researchers, some provide grants to scientists to conduct research, and some fund activities that might not be thought of as research, but really are. For example, the publication fees for peer reviewed journals, funds to pay for scientists to attend conferences, and funds to support a scientific conference are paying for an important part of the research endeavor.

It is not always the case that a conflict of interest arises when a corporation pays for research. In a former life, I was an administrator for a moderately sized research funding entity. We had “member” companies that paid annual dues that were rather high. In return for those dues, we provided experts who would show up and give talks. This was a total rip-off to the companies, because they also had to pay for the travel costs of the experts, but that is not why they contributed. These were Japanese companies, and the experts were all economists. The point was to distribute the money to young scholars — graduate students, post docs, and junior faculty — for whatever research projects they needed money for. The projects had to be real research, but they did not have to be on anything in particular. The results were generally put into a free and open access publication series (along with other research) and we would ship off copies of the publication to all the member companies. Nobody was paying anybody to produce any particular result, but the research was sometimes (but often not) valuable to those companies. For example, some Japanese companies, including at least one that paid us dues, had developed a great new way to manage warehousing of parts. It saved money and reduced waste. One of the research projects we funded looked at that system, compared it to other systems, and recommended how it might be applied elsewhere. In another project, one of the firs studies to ever look at putting some kind of price on carbon was carried out. None of the companies that funded this research had any interest, for or against, this concept.

In the old days, AT&T funded Bell Labs. It still exists today, and I have no idea how it works now. I’m told by people who worked there back in the mid 20th century that it was a place where funding came in from the mother company to allow scientists to do more or less what they wanted to. Numerous important inventions that we use today came out of Bell Labs, and the people who worked there even won a bunch of Nobel Prizes. That was probably another example of industry funding research for the purpose of finding out new stuff, and little or no nefarious intent was attached.

Conferences are typically funded by a combination of grants from institutions (like the National Science Foundation, etc.), conference fees (which can be rather hefty) charged to participants, and grants from interested commercial parties. For example, a company that makes microscopes might kick in some money for a biology conference. They may also be represented in the part of the conference where private companies (or institutions with a product) can set up booths (that they pay for), like a trade conference.

Those private companies may well have an interest in the outcome of the research being performed by the various scientists who attend the conference. Maybe they want to sell the scientists a gadget to use in their lab. Maybe they want to use the research to advance their corporate mission, such as better ways to produce or deliver a product. Most of the time they probably just want people to like them, or to recognize their names.

So far, there is not much wrong with that, either.

Corporate Funding of the Research Endeavor: Bad

But sometimes private corporations have different kind of interest. They don’t just want to get more information and knowledge about the areas where science overlaps with their corporate mission. They don’t just want to be seriously considered as a source for some matériel or equipment that scientists use. What some corporations want to do, sometimes, is to influence the outcome of scientific research, for their own interests, in ways that require that the science itself be adulterated in some substantial way. They want to see the dissemination of results that may be bogus but that serves their financial interests, or they may want to repress results that would lead policy makers, legislatures, the public, or the scientific community, to criticize, eschew, or even stop one or more of their profitable activities.

This is a sufficiently important problem that one of the largest (possibly the largest, depending on how one defines things) scientific organizations related to the study of Planet Earth, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), has a policy about this. As part of their “organizational support policy,” the AGU says,

AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science.

Organizational partners are defined as those that make an annual financial commitment to AGU
of $5,000 or more.

Why not accept the money? Doesn’t it make sense to take the money and then have lots of money and stuff, and ignore the wishes of potentially nefarious actors in this game?

I knew a guy once, only barely (a friend of the father of a friend). He was a major research scientist at a major institution, and he invented a technology for seeing things that are very small, which had applications in a wide range of research and praxis, including materials science and medicine. But his methodology involved the development of technology that one might use to make a terrible but effective weapon. He received a lot of his funding from those who might fund such things, and this allowed him to do his work without having to spend much money on grant proposals. But, he claimed (in his retirement), he never intended his work to be used to make a terrible weapon. Furthermore, he knew, privately, from his own research that it never could be. What he was doing would simply not work in that context. But he never mentioned that to his funders. He just took the money, and used it to save lives.

Well, one of the reasons one might not want to take money from sources with nefarious intent (and here we assume developing a terrible weapon is nefarious, though one could argue differently, I suppose) without ever advancing said nefarious goal, is that it is actually unethical. But one could counter argue that the savings of lives and advancement of civilization and such outweighs the ethics, or more exactly, that it is appropriate to develop situational ethics.

That is an extreme example, but in some ways, parallel to what a major organization like the AGU would be doing if they knowingly accepted money from major corporations who intended to encourage, develop, disseminate, or otherwise use for their own interests any kind of fake science or anti-science. Why not take the money and run? Partly, one assumes, because it isn’t exactly kosher.

Another reason is that if one takes anti-science money, one may end up advancing anti-science agendas even if one does not want to. The very fact that an anti-science entity (a corporation or foundation funded by a corporation) funds a major legit conference is a way of saying that the corporation itself is legit. It is a way that a scientific organization can advance anti-science even if it doesn’t want to.

Scientist Tell AGU To Drop Exxon Sponsorship

You all know about the Exxon maneno. Exxon, aka ExxonMobil, has recently been exposed as having repressed scientific information that indicated that we, our species, would ultimately need to change our energy systems in order to keep fossil fuels in the ground, else face dire consequences. Decades ago, when the science already indicated that this was a problem, Exxon independently verified that we needed to keep the fossil fuels in the ground, then shut up about it, because it was, and is, in their corporate interest to take the fossil fuel out of the ground.

I wrote about the Exxon kerfuffle back when it first broke, here. In that post, I provided a thumb-suck analysis comparing what Exxon knew about climate change then, and what the IPCC and NASA know about it now. They are pretty much the same, with respect to global surface warming caused by the human release of greenhouse gas pollution from burning fossil fuels such as those extracted and sold by Exxon.

Over a month ago, scientists Ploy Achakulwisut, Ben Scandella, Britta Voss asked the question, “Why is the largest Earth science conference still sponsored by Exxon?” They noted,

The impacts of Exxon’s tactics have been devastating. Thanks in part to Exxon, the American public remains confused and polarized about climate change. Thanks in part to Exxon, climate science-denying Republicans in Congress and lobby groups operating at the state level remain a major obstacle to U.S. efforts to mitigate climate change.

And thanks in no small part to Exxon, climate action has been delayed at the global level; as the international community began to consider curbing greenhouse gas emissions with the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, Exxon orchestrated and funded anti-Kyoto campaigns, including participation in the Global Climate Coalition. The latter was so successful at shifting debate that the George W. Bush administration credited it with playing a key role in its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol.

So, now there is a letter signed by many top scientists asking the American Geophysical Union to make ExxonMobile an Ex-contributor to the conference. According to the Natural History Museum,

more than 100 geoscientists sent the following letter to the President of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) – the world’s largest association of Earth scientists – urging the association to end its sponsorship deal with ExxonMobil. The oil giant is currently under investigation by the New York and California Attorneys General for its long history of climate denial campaigns.

Many notable scientists have signed on, including the former director of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies James E. Hansen, the former President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Harvard Professor James J. McCarthy, Harvard Professor and author of Merchants of Doubt Naomi Oreskes, and Michael Mann– Director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

The letter is the most recent example of a growing trend of scientists stepping out of their traditional roles to urge science institutions to cut ties to fossil fuel companies.

As part of the press release announcing this letter, Michael Mann (author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines, and Dire Predictions, 2nd Edition: Understanding Climate Change) noted, “While I recognize that it is a contentious matter within the diverse AGU community, I just don’t see how we can, in good conscience, continue to accept contributions from a company that has spent millions of dollars over several decades funding bad faith attacks on scientists within our community whose scientific findings happen to be inconvenient for fossil fuel interests.”

InsideClimateNews has a timeline of what happened with Exxon, here.

AGU’s president, Margaret Leinen, wrote on the AGU’s blog, that “The AGU Board of Directors will take up the questions raised in this letter at their upcoming meeting in April, and prior to that will carefully review the information that has been provided, and any additional information that becomes available in the meantime. We will consult with our various member constituencies as well other stakeholders prior to the Board meeting. In addition, the Board will look more deeply into the question of what constitutes verifiable information about current activities.”

InsideClimateNews notes that this campaign “…is part of a growing trend of scientists’ protesting efforts by fossil fuel companies to undermine climate science. Last year, for instance, dozens of researchers urged Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History in New York to cut ties with David Koch of Koch Industries.” See this post at InsideClimateNews for more information about the Exxon-AGU problem, and the broader movement.

As I noted at the beginning, this is all about the honest conversation. I’ve talked about this before. So often, the conversation, usually public and policy-related, is not about the science at all, but about other things, and the science itself gets thrown under the bus. My understanding (limited, I know) of the criminal justice system is that if a prosecutor knows about exculpatory evidence, they are required to provide it to the court or defense, thus possibly negatively affecting their own chance of success, but at the same time, doing the right thing. One would think that in science, institutions or individuals who know about evidence important in understanding some scientific problem, that they are ethically obligated to make that information available with reasonable alacrity. If all those involved in the large scale and complex conversations about climate change and energy had as a central ethical theme a commitment to accuracy, openness, and to the process of mutual aid in advancing our understanding of the topics at hand, it wouldn’t matter who gave money to whom, because that money would not be linked to efforts to repress knowledge or to produce and disseminate misinformation.

And, certainly, such corporations should not be attacking the science or the scientists, or funding other organizations that do. Contributing to a valid scientific organization like the AGU does not make up for such behavior.

Had that been the way things worked fifty years ago, by now, Exxon-Mobile and other fossil fuel companies would have shifted their corporate activities away from fossil fuels. They would be phasing out coal, oil, and natural gas, and developing clean energy solutions. They would not have stuck themselves with vast stranded assets that they now have a corporate responsibility, no matter how immoral or antiscientific, to develop. There is an idea that corporations are primarily responsible to their stockholders, and this widely accepted but highly questionable “ethic” has been applied to justify, it seems, a significant departure from the pursuit of knowledge and the application of that knowledge to managing human problems and protecting our precious planet. This is a fundamental flaw in how we do things, and it is the reason AGU has to but the “ex” in Exxon as a sponsor.

Scientists’ Letter to the American Geophysical Union

Here is the letter:

Dear Dr. Margaret Leinen,

We, the undersigned members of AGU (and other concerned geoscientists), write to ask you to please reconsider ExxonMobil’s sponsorship of the AGU Fall Meetings.

As Earth scientists, we are deeply troubled by the well-documented complicity of ExxonMobil in climate denial and misinformation. For example, recent investigative journalism has shed light on the fact that Exxon, informed by their in-house scientists, has known about the devastating global warming effects of fossil fuel burning since the late 1970s, but spent the next decades funding misinformation campaigns to confuse the public, slander scientists, and sabotage science – the very science conducted by thousands of AGU members. Even today, Exxon continues to fund the American Legislative Exchange Council, a lobbying group that routinely misrepresents climate science to US state legislators and attempts to block pro-renewable energy policies. Just last year, Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson downplayed the validity of climate models and the value of renewable energy policies.

The impacts of Exxon’s tactics have been devastating. Thanks in part to Exxon, the American public remains confused and polarized about climate change. And thanks in part to Exxon, climate science-denying members of Congress and lobby groups operating at the state level remain a major obstacle to US efforts to mitigate climate change.

The research disciplines of Earth sciences conducted by AGU members are diverse, but they are united by their shared value of truthfulness. AGU states that its mission and core values are to “promote discovery in Earth science for the benefit of humanity” and for “a sustainable future.” Indeed, AGU has established a long history of scientific excellence with its peer-reviewed publications and conferences, as well as a strong position statement on the urgency of climate action, and we’re proud to be included among its members.

But by allowing Exxon to appropriate AGU’s institutional social license to help legitimize the company’s climate misinformation, AGU is undermining its stated values as well as the work of many of its own members. The Union’s own Organizational Support Policy specifically states that “AGU will not accept funding from organizational partners that promote and/or disseminate misinformation of science, or that fund organizations that publicly promote misinformation of science.” We believe that in fully and transparently assessing sponsors on a case-by-case basis, AGU will determine that some, including ExxonMobil, do not meet the standards of this policy. We therefore call on you as the President of AGU to protect the integrity of climate science by rejecting the sponsorship of future AGU conferences by corporations complicit in climate misinformation, starting with ExxonMobil.

While we recognize that some of AGU’s scientific disciplines are deeply tied to the fossil fuel industry, we are also increasingly aware of the tension within our community regarding how we should respond to the urgency of climate change as individual scientists and as institutions. It is time to bring this tension into the light and determine how an organization such as AGU should approach the major challenges of today to ensure that we truly are working for the benefit of humanity. In particular, as the world’s largest organization of Earth scientists, if we do not take an active stand against climate misinformation now, when will we?

Yours respectfully,

AGU members:

Robert R. Bidigare, PhD, AGU Fellow, University of Hawaii

Cecilia Bitz, Professor, University of Washington

David Burdige, Professor and Eminent Scholar, Old Dominion University

Kerry Emanuel, Professor, MIT

Peter Frumhoff, PhD, Director of Science and Policy, Union of Concerned Scientists

Richard H. Gammon, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington

Catherine Gautier, Professor Emerita, University of California Santa Barbara

Charles Greene, Professor, Cornell University

James E. Hansen, Adjunct Professor, Columbia University

Charles Harvey, Professor, MIT

Roger Hooke, Research Professor, University of Maine

Mark Z. Jacobson, Professor, Stanford University

Dan Jaffe, Professor and Chair, University of Washington Bothell

Michael C. MacCracken, Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs, Climate Institute

Michael E. Mann, Distinguished Professor, Penn State University

James J. McCarthy, Professor, Harvard University

James Murray, Professor, University of Washington

Naomi Oreskes, Professor, Harvard University

Nathan Phillips, Professor, Boston University

Christopher Rapley, CBE, Professor, University College London

Richard Somerville, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of California San Diego

Pattanun Achakulwisut, PhD Student, Harvard University

Becky Alexander, Associate Professor, University of Washington

Theodore Barnhart, PhD Student, University of Colorado/INSTAAR

Yanina Barrera, PhD Student, Harvard University

Dino Bellugi, PhD Candidate, University of California Berkeley

Jo Browse, Postdoctoral Research, University of Leeds, UK

Adam Campbell, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Otago

Chawalit Charoenpong, PhD Student, MIT/WHOI Joint Program

Sarah Crump, PhD Student, University of Colorado Boulder

Daniel Czizco, Associate Professor, MIT

Katherine Dagon, PhD Student, Harvard University

Suzane Simoes de Sá, PhD Student, Harvard University

Michael Diamond, PhD Student, University of Washington

Kyle Delwiche, PhD Student, MIT

Sarah Doherty, Associate Professor, University of Washington

Liz Drenkard, Postdoctoral Researcher, Rutgers University

Emily V. Fischer, Assistant Professor

Priya Ganguli, Postdoctoral Fellow

Gretchen Goldman, PhD, Lead Analyst, Union of Concerned Scientists

Meagan Gonneea, Postdoc

Jordon Hemingway, PhD Student, MIT/WHOI Joint Program

Hannah Horowitz, PhD Student, Harvard University

Irene Hu, PhD student, MIT

Lu Hu, Postdoctoral Researcher, Harvard University

Eric Leibensperger, Assistant Professor, State University of New York at Plattsburgh

Marena Lin, PhD Student, Harvard University

Simon J. Lock, PhD Student, Harvard University

Andrew McDonnell, Assistant Professor, University of Alaska Fairbanks

Bruce Monger, Senior Lecturer, Cornell University

Daniel Ohnemus, Postdoctoral Researcher, Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences

Morgan O’Neill, Postdoctoral Fellow, Weizmann Institute of Science

Cruz Ortiz Jr., PhD Student, University of California Santa Barbara

Jonathan Petters, Research Fellow, University of California Santa Cruz

Allison Pfeiffer, PhD Student, University of California Santa Cruz

James L. Powell, PhD

Christina M. Richardson, MS Student, University of Hawaii Manoa

Ignatius Rigor, Senior Principal Research Scientist, University of Washington

Paul Richardson, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Oregon

Erica Rosenblum, PhD Student, Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Ben Scandella, PhD Student, MIT

Neesha Schnepf, PhD Student, University of Colorado at Boulder/CIRES

Amos P. K. Tai, Assistant Professor, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Robert Tardif, Research Scientist

Katherine Travis, PhD Student, Harvard University

Britta Voss, Postdoctoral Fellow

Andrew Wickert, Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota

Kyle Young, Graduate Student, University of California Santa Cruz

Xu Yue, Postdoctoral Associate, Yale University

Emily Zakem, PhD Student, MIT

Cheryl Zurbrick, Postdoctoral Associate, MIT

.

Other concerned geoscientists:

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, CBE, Professor, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

Helen Amos, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University

Antara Banerjee, Postdoctoral Research Scientist

Emma Bertran, PhD Student, Harvard University

Skylar Bayer, PhD Student

Thomas Breider, Postdoctoral Researcher, Harvard University

Stella R. Brodzik, Software Engineer, University of Washington

BB Cael, PhD Student, MIT/WHOI Joint Program

Sophie Chu, PhD Student, MIT/WHOI Joint Program

Archana Dayalu, PhD Student, Harvard University

Gregory de Wet, PhD Student, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Christopher Fairless, PhD Student, University of Manchester, UK

Mara Freilich, PhD Student, MIT

Wiebke Frey, Research Associate, University of Manchester, UK

Nicolas Grisouard, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

Sydney Gunnarson, PhD Student, University of Iceland/University of Colorado Boulder

Sam Hardy, PhD Student, University of Manchester, UK

David Harning, PhD Student, University of Colorado Boulder

Sophie Haslett, PhD Student, University of Manchester, UK

Richard Hogen, Aerospace Thermodynamic Engineer, United Launch Alliance

Anjuli Jain, PhD Student, MIT

Harriet Lau, PhD Student, Harvard University

Cara Lauria, Masters Student, University of Colorado Boulder

Franziska Lechleitner, PhD Student, ETH Zu?rich

Michael S. Long, Research Scientist

John Marsham, Associate Professor, University of Leeds, UK

Catherine Scott, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Leeds, UK

Rohini Shivamoggi, PhD student, MIT

Victoria Smith, PhD, Instrument Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Science, University of Leeds, UK

Gail Spencer, Environmental Specialist, Washington Department of Ecology

Melissa Sulprizio, Scientific Programmer, Harvard University

Rachel White, Postdoctoral Associate, University of Washington

Leehi Yona, BA, Senior Fellow, Dartmouth College

Yanxu Zhang, Postdoctoral Researcher, Harvard University

Sea Level Rise Challenged Fiji May Experience Strongest Tropical Storm On Record

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Tropical cyclone Winston is now a Category 4 storm and is probably going to make a direct hit on Fiji, tomorrow, Saturday. It will likely be a record storm for Fiji.

The storm is fueled by high sea surface temperatures, which extend to a significant depth, which probably caused the storm to intensify rapidly and to such a high state.

Jeff Masters and Bob Henson have written up the important information on this storm, here.

Fiji has been hit with a number of bad tropical storms, mainly concentrated in recent decades.

UPDATE (Friday PM Central)

Jeff Masters and Bob Henson are now reporting that Tropical Cyclone Winston is expected to grow in strength to become the strongest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the South Pacific waters east of Australia, with winds reaching 185mph.

Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia mentioned to me that the sea surface temperatures around Fiji are not so high because of the current El Nino. Normally during an El Nino this area is relatively cooler, and instead, tends to get warm during La Nina events, because of changes in the regional part of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. So, these high temperatures can pretty much be attributed to anthropogenic global warming.

Meanwhile, on his Facebook page, Simon refers to “The unusual history-defying path of Cyclone Winston. Models predict the storm may actually do a full loop.” Here is what that looks like:

12745615_10153397983921156_2232915957614893711_n

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:

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.

    About That Satellite Data

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    Last December, the United States Senate subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, headed by Ted Cruz, held a hearing to which they invited a gaggle of climate change deniers and one good guy to testify about how the science on climate change is all wrong. I wrote about it here. The strangest aspect of this hearing was probably shock jock Mark Steyn’s use of the venue to argue his case in a civil law suit pertaining to his apparently libelous behavior. But there was another feature of this hearing worth noting. Both the deniers, in particular John Christy, and Senator Cruz focused on a set of data that they construed to indicated showed that global warming is not really happening.

    The oceans are warming significantly. The Earth’s surface, as measured by thermometers as well as direct and indirect measurements of the sea surface, is warming significantly. The only people who doubt this are those who are either very badly misinformed or politically or financially motivated to deny reality.

    But among the data are satellite based measurements of the troposphere. These data also show warming if properly analyzed, but some forms of these data can be used to make a graph that might give the impression that the warming we clearly see is not happening, or at least, not happening much.

    So what is going on here? Are these satellite data telling the Real Truth, contrary to what all the other data show, or is this just a bad data set, or are these data being abused by contrarians?

    Most of the satellite data in question come from a set of birds that are deployed for use in weather prediction, but secondarily measure the temperature of the Troposphere. They have sensors that collect microwave energy emitted by Oxygen molecules to estimate temperature. This technique has certain advantages and certain disadvantages, and is fairly easy to deploy.

    How one goes from these microwave signals to a temperature measurement is actually very complicated. This has been further complicated by the failure of some of the instruments, and the fact that over time the satellites, in a polar orbit, lose altitude over time, which changes how the readings must be calibrated. Also, the satellites are supposed to pass over the Earth at nearly noon and nearly midnight (on opposite sides of the planet) as the Earth rotates beneath. But this synchronization goes off over a period of time as well.

    And that is the simple version.

    There have been many studies of these data, and attempts to adjust for all of the problems in this methodology. The experts do not all agree on how to correct the data. There are two approaches commonly used to produce potentially usable data (known as RSS and UAH) and each has advantages and disadvantages.

    Skeptical Science has a set of three discussions, couched in less or more technical terms, of how this all works. If this is of interest to you, check it out.

    Tamino, at Open Mind, addressed Ted Cruz’s misuse of the satellite data and concludes,

    When Ted Cruz said that both satellites and balloon data fail to show warming, he was just plain wrong. When he said these data sets were the best evidence of whether warming is occurring, he was just plain wrong. Together, those two claims make up point number 4 of the 7 things he called “facts” — but he was wrong about their being facts. They’re just claims, claims which are just plain wrong.

    Ted Cruz also didn’t seem able to keep straight how many of his so-called “facts” he listed. There were 7, but he repeatedly referred to 8. I guess when it comes to counting anywhere near as high as 10, Ted Cruz is again likely to be just plain wrong.

    Global Warming Over The Next Decade: Candidates take note. UPDATED

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    The Time Scales of Political and Climate Change Matter

    The US is engaged in the laborious process of electing a new leader, who will likely be President for 8 years. Climate change has finally become an issue in US electoral politics. The climate policies of the next US President, and the Congress, will have a direct impact on the climate, because those policies will affect how much fossil carbon is put into the atmosphere over coming decades. So it is vital to consider what the climate may do during the next administration and the longer period that will include that administration’s effective legacy period, more or less the next decade starting now.

    There is evidence that the ongoing warming of the planet’s surface is likely accelerate in the near future. Recent decades have seen the Earth’s surface temperatures go up at a relatively slower than average rate compared to earlier decades. The best available science suggests that this rate is about to increase. We can expect a series of mostly record breaking months and years that will add up to an alarmingly warm planet.

    (The graphic showing continued global warming through 2015 at the top of the post is from here.)

    The Rate Of Global Warming Is About To Increase

    I wrote about this last February, in discussing a paper by Steinmann, Mann, and Miller, that said:

    The recent slowdown in global warming has brought into question the reliability of climate model projections of future temperature change and has led to a vigorous debate over whether this slowdown is the result of naturally occurring, internal variability or forcing external to Earth’s climate system. … we applied a semi-empirical approach that combines climate observations and model simulations to estimate Atlantic- and Pacific-based internal multidecadal variability (termed “AMO” and “PMO,” respectively). Using this method [we show that] competition between a modest positive peak in the AMO and a substantially negative-trending PMO … produce a slowdown or “false pause” in warming of the past decade.

    That research was also discussed by Chris Mooney and John Upton. John Upton updated this discussion earlier this week, noting,

    Cyclical changes in the Pacific Ocean have thrown earth’s surface into what may be an unprecedented warming spurt, following a global warming slowdown that lasted about 15 years.

    While El Niño is being blamed for an outbreak of floods, storms and unseasonable temperatures across the planet, a much slower-moving cycle of the Pacific Ocean has also been playing a role in record-breaking warmth. The recent effects of both ocean cycles are being amplified by climate change.

    Why Does The Rate of Global Warming Vary?

    This is pretty complicated, and even those who are on the cutting edge of this research are cautious in making links between their models and the on the ground reality of warming in the near future. The long term rise in surface temperature, which is what we usually refer to when using the term “Global Warming,” is not steady and smooth, but instead, it is rather squiggly. But the ups and downs that accompany the general upward trend are mostly caused by things that are known.

    The sun provides the energy to warm the Earth’s surface, and this contribution changes over time, but the sun varies very little in its output, and thus has less influence than other factors. The sun’s energy warms the Earth mainly because our atmosphere contains some greenhouse gasses. The more greenhouse gas the more surface warmth. As humans add greenhouse gas (mainly CO2 released by burning fossil fuel) the surface temperature eventually rises to a higher equilibrium. But the variation in the sun’s strength is hardly observable.

    Aerosols, also known as dust or in some cases pollution (or airborne particles) can reduce the surface temperature by intercepting some of the Sun’s energy on its way to the surface (I oversimplify). These aerosols come mainly from industrial pollution and volcanoes. The addition of a large amount of aerosol into the atmosphere by a major volcanic eruption can have a relative cooling effect but one that lasts for a short duration, because the dust eventually settles.

    Screen Shot 2016-01-07 at 11.09.08 AM

    There are many other important factors. Changes in land use patterns that cause changes in effectiveness of carbon sinks – places where atmospheric carbon (mainly CO2) is trapped in solid form by biological systems – increase atmospheric CO2. Melting glacial ice takes up heat and influences surface temperatures. And so on.

    The biggest single factor that imposes a squiggle on the upward trending line of surface temperature is the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean. Close to 100% of the extra heat added to the Earth’s system by global warming ends up in the world’s oceans. The heat is moved into the ocean because the surface warms up (from the sun) but surface water is constantly being mixed into lower levels of the ocean, and visa versa. When it comes to the Earth’s surface temperature, the ocean is the dog and the surface is the tail.

    A famous, and now perhaps infamous, example of this interaction between ocean and air is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Here’s the simple version (see here for more detail). The equatorial Pacific’s surface is constantly being warmed by the sun. The surface waters are usually blown towards the west by trade winds. (Those trade winds are caused in part by the rotation of the Earth, and in part by the ongoing redistribution of excess tropical heat towards the poles). This causes warm water to move west, where it is potentially subducted into the ocean, moving heat into the sea. That heat eventually may work its way out of the ocean through various currents.

    During many years, the ins and the outs are similar. During some years, La Niña years, the amount of heat moving into the ocean is larger, which can cause a small cooling influence on the planet. Every now and then, the reverse happens. This involves complicated changes in trade winds and ocean currents. A good chunk of the heat that has been stored in the Pacific now emerges and is added very abruptly, over a period of several months, to the atmosphere. This is an El Niño event. We are at this moment experiencing one of the strongest El Niño events ever recorded, possibly the strongest (we won’t know until it has been going a while longer.)

    ENSO is one, in fact the biggest, example of atmosphere-ocean interaction that influences surface temperatures. But, ENSO is only one part of the interaction between the Pacific and the atmosphere. There is also a phenomenon known as the Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation (PMO). For its part, the Atlantic has the AMO, a similar system. These phenomena are characterized by a general transfer of heat either into or out of the ocean, with several years in a row seeing more heat move into the ocean, followed by several years in a row of more heat moving out of the ocean.

    Though ENSO and the PMO are distinct processes, they may be related. I asked climate scientist Michael Mann if he views El Nino as part of the larger scale system of PMO, or if El Niño essentially rides on top of, or acts independently from PMO. He told me, “I would say the latter. At some level, the PMO really describes the long-term changes in the frequency and magnitude of El Niño and La Niña events, i.e. change in the behavior of ENSO on multidecadal timescales, and it will appear as multidecadal oscillation with an ENSO-like signature with some modifications due to the fact that certain processes, like gyre-advection and subduction of water masses, act on longer timescales and do they are seen with the PMO bot not El Niño or La Niña.”

    The influence of ENSO on global surface temperatures is well illustrated in this graphic from Skeptical Science.

    ENSO_Temps_500

    Here, the surface temperature anomaly is shown from the late 1960s to the present. The annual values are classified into years during which ENSO was neutral, or neutral with volcanic influences, La Nina years, and El Niño years with or without volcanoes. A separate trend line is shown for years that should be relatively warm (El Niño), relatively cool (La Niña), and years that should be about average.

    The influence of the PMO is also apparent.

    Screen Shot 2016-01-07 at 12.18.44 PM

    This graphic shows the measurement of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the surface temperature anomalies. The data are averaged out over a two year cycle (otherwise the PDO would be way too squiggly to be useful visually). Notice that during periods when the PDO is positive (adding heat to the atmosphere) there tends to be a stronger upward trend of surface temperature, and when the PDO is negative, the surface temperature rises more slowly. Remember, a lot of other factors, such as aerosols, are influencing the temperature line, so this relationship is quite imperfect.

    Also notice that both lines trend dramatically upward near the end of the graph. This reflects the last couple of years (including right now) of dramatically increasing surface temperatures, and an apparent positive shift in the PDO. Just as interesting is the negative PDO associated with a reduced upward trend in the surface temperatures, fondly known by many as the “Hiatus” or “Pause” in global warming, during the first part of the 20th century. Indeed, it is likely that this slowdown (not really a pause) in warming is largely a result of a higher rate of excess heat being plowed into the oceans, and less coming back out. This is also a period during which the ENSO system produced no strong El Niños.

    But the PDO is, as noted, part of a larger phenomenon of ocean-atmosphere interaction. The study noted above by Steinman, Mann, and Miller takes a broad view of these oscillations and their impact on climate. In RealClimate, Mann writes,

    We focused on the Northern Hemisphere and the role played by two climate oscillations known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or “AMO” … and the … Pacific Multidecadal Oscillation or “PMO”… The oscillation in Northern Hemisphere average temperatures (which we term the Northern Hemisphere Multidecadal Oscillation or “NMO”) is found to result from a combination of the AMO and PMO.

    …Our conclusion that natural cooling in the Pacific is a principal contributor to the recent slowdown in large-scale warming is consistent with some other recent studies…

    …the state-of-the-art climate model simulations analyzed in our current study suggest that this phenomenon is a manifestation of purely random, internal oscillations in the climate system.

    This finding has potential ramifications for the climate changes we will see in the decades ahead. As we note in the last line of our article,

    Given the pattern of past historical variation, this trend will likely reverse with internal variability, instead adding to anthropogenic warming in the coming decades.

    That is perhaps the most worrying implication of our study, for it implies that the “false pause” may simply have been a cause for false complacency, when it comes to averting dangerous climate change.

    What Will Global Warming Do During The Next Decade?

    Have political leaders and representatives been lukewarm on climate change over recent years in part because the climate change itself has been less dramatic than it could be? And, conversely, is it the case that the next couple of decades will see a reverse in both? I asked Michael Mann if his research indicated that the indicators such as the PMO, AMO, or the derived NMO, show that the oceans are about to contribute to a speedup in warming. He told me, “…both PMO and AMO contribute to NMO, but in recent decades PMO has been the dominant player, and yes, I would expect to see the recent turn toward El Nino-like conditions and enhanced hemispheric/global warming as an apparent upturn in the NMO, though it is always difficult if not impossible to diagnose true change in the low-frequency signal right at the end of a time series.”

    Let’s have a closer look at the influence of the PDO on global surface temperatures. Since the human influence on the atmosphere has grown over time, we want to focus on more recent decades when the input of additional greenhouse gases had already risen to a high level. This graphic shows the NASA GISS surface temperature anomaly values (the dots) from 1980 to the present, but with some trend lines added in.

    Screen Shot 2016-01-08 at 10.19.19 AM

    (The NOAA GISS data are a running 12 month mean using the monthly data. Note that the trend lines added to this graph are meant to visually underscore the differences between time periods in the overall trend, and have no special statistical value.)

    The black dots and the curvy trend line to the left represent a period of time when the PDO was positive, but also includes a depression in surface temperature because of the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. I made the trend line a “second order polynomial” instead of a regular straight line. A polynomial equation can capture internal curviness of a series of data.

    (A polynomial equation that is of the same “order” as the number of points in the data set would, theoretically, zig and zag back and forth to account for each data point’s position which would be absurd. One must be careful with poylnomials. But a second order polynomial can honestly reflect a modest curviness in a series of data, and in this case, helps the line do its job at visually presenting a short term pattern.)

    The second series of data, in blue, shows a period of mostly negative PMO, again, with a second order polynomial line drawn on it. This is the period of time that includes the so-called “hiatus” in global warming, when the upward trend of increasing surface temperature was somewhat attenuated. That attenuation was probably caused by a number of factors, and in fact, at least one of those factors had to do with inadequacies of the data itself, in that the measurements fail to account for extreme warming in the Arctic and parts of Africa. But the negative PMO, and likely, according to Steinmann, Mann and Miller, a larger scale relationship between atmosphere and ocean, seem to have somewhat flattened out the line.

    But then we come to the third part of the data, in red. The ocean-atmosphere relationship has switched the other way. The PMO has been positive since the last part of 2013, and over a smaller and more recent time frame, we have been experiencing a strong El Niño.

    This graphic does a nice job showing how short and medium term upward and downward trends eventually cancel out to produce a single upward trend in global surface temperature. Very short term shifts such as a given El Niño event or a given Volcanic eruption cause the most obvious squiggles. Somewhat longer term, multi-decade trends such as the PDO cause longer parts of the series of measurements to rise more or less quickly. But over nearly 40 years shown here, and longer periods, all the ups and downs average out to a single trend that can be reliably projected for a reasonable period of time.

    Will More Rapid Global Warming Spur A More Effective Policy Response?

    These ups and downs in the rate of warming are not important to the long term trend, but they are important because of their immediate effects on weather. And that is all that should matter. But these short and medium term trends, as well as even more immediate events such as individual storms, take on a greater importance that has nothing to do with the science of climate change itself. These changes affect the way politicians, advocates, and the general public, regard climate change, and serve to motivate or attenuate action on one side of the false debate or another.

    We have known enough about climate change and its causes to have started the shift from fossil fuels to alternative strategies for producing energy long before 1980, but have in fact done very little to solve this problem. Initially, climate change seemed more like a thing of the future, and in fact, had relatively little impact on the most influential and powerful nations and people. Disruptions of weather patterns started to become more apparent around or just before 1980, but for the next few decades anti-science forces were well organized, and their efforts were enhanced, at the beginning of the 21st century, by the unthinking and unknowing process of air-sea interactions that reduced the rate of surface temperature increase even while weather patterns continued to become more and more chaotic.

    But the truth is, a widespread flood in the American bottomlands defeats a snowball in the hands of a contrarian Senator. Eventually, more and more people in the US have been affected by inclement weather, and the frequency with which destructive storms of various kinds hammer the same subpopulation again and again has gone up. The symbolic snowball melts under the cold hard stare of voters who wonder how they are going to rebuild their lives after floods, severe storms, and droughts have taken away their property, in some cases their loved ones, and raised their insurance rates.

    So the question emerges, will the next decade or so be a period of increased, or of attenuated, motivation from Mother Nature to act on climate change? The rational actor will act now, because we know that the greenhouse gas we pump into the atmosphere today changes the climate for decades to come. The reactionary actor with little capability or interest in thinking long term (i.e. most people) will be mollified by a decade with few severe storms, not much flooding, a seemingly secure food supply, and a snowball or two.

    I left the projection of the future as a single estimate based on the past several decades (all the data shown on the graph). I could have imposed a more upward trending line, maybe a nice curve like these polynomials show, as an extension to the blue line. But since the graphic is going out a couple more decades, and the ups and downs average out over several decades, I think it is fair enough to use the linear projection shown by the red dotted line.

    I’m not actually making a prediction of future global surface temperatures here. What I’m showing instead is that two things seem to be true. First, long term (over decades) global warming has happened and will likely to continue at about the same pace for a while. This has been going on long enough that by now we should viscerally understand that the squiggles are misleading. Second, the last couple of decades have been a period of reduced warming, but that period is likely over, and we are likely to experience an increased rate of warming.

    Will surface temperatures during the term of the next POTUS squiggle about mostly above that red dotted line on this graph, or will those temperatures squiggle up and down above and below the line, or even below it? Based on the best available science, that first choice is most likely. Whomever ends up being POTUS, and the corresponding Congress, will be enacting (or failing to enact) policy during a period of surface temperature increasing at a rate higher than we have in recent years.

    A vitally important known unknown, is what will the effects of such a rise in surface temperature be. We have various levels of confidence that storminess, changes in the distribution of rainfall, drought, and through the melting of glacial ice, sea level rise, are all important forms of climate disruption we are currently experiencing, and we should expect more of the same. The unknown is whether or not we should expect a dramatic acceleration of these changes in the short term future.

    How will the insurance industry address an increase in widespread catastrophic damage caused by storms and floods? Will the government have to underwrite future losses, or will disaster insurance simply become something we can’t have? Will there be damage to our food production system that ultimately results in less certainly in the food supply, and how will we deal with that? The well known “reugee crisis” is a climate refugee crisis. But it may be a small one compared to what could happen in the future. Will we need to restrict development in mountain areas more subject to fires, and withdraw settlement from low lying areas along major rivers? How will we address more widespread and more severe killer heat waves?

    The battle to preserve the use of fossil fuels exists at the state level in the US. Should we have a national effort to stop the legislatures in red states from putting the kibosh on local development of clean energy sources, either by energy utilities or individual home owners?

    Sea level rise has already had several negative effects, but it is also is a longer term issue, and is perhaps among the most serious consequences of human greenhouse gas pollution. At some point, American politicians in some areas will be faced not with the question, “Will this or that Congressional district be represented by a Democrat or a Republican,” but rather, “Where the people who lived in this district go now that the sea is taking it?”

    Over time, I think the social and political will to address climate change has grown, though very slowly. It might seem that the effects of climate change right now are fairly severe, with floods and fires and all that being more common. But while these effects are real and important, they have been minor compared to what the future is likely to bring. The anemic but positive growth of willingness to act has occurred in a political and physical climate that is less than nurturing of dramatic and effective action.

    Whoever is elected president this time around, and the Congress, will serve during a period when the people’s will to act will transform from that inspired by activists pushing for change, to outcries of a larger number of desperate and suffering newcomers to the rational side of the climate change discussion.

    Expect a sea change in the politics of science policy.

    Added: See this recent post by Peter Sinclair, and his video:

    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: