August 24, 2008
Arctic Sea Ice: The trend is ominous. The albedo feedback is strong (Ice reflects 90% of the sun’s heat, water absorbs 90% – water absorbs nine times more heat than ice). Last year’s huge record allowed only first year sea ice to form last winter. This year’s ice is now rapidly melting. The graph below shows the melt being even faster than it was last year, and we have another month of melt yet to come. The trend is obviously much more like last year’s trend and not the average. Many, and maybe most of the projections see the coverage this year at least getting very close to last years record, if not breaking it. The reason is the strong effects of the albedo feedback. These feedback mechanisms are very strong and once started tend to act like avalanches – increasing very dramatically in speed and size until the bottom of the mountain is encountered. In this case, the bottom of the mountain will be when there is no more ice to melt.
Sea Surface Temperature in the Arctic (Anomaly Analysis): First: The anomaly is the difference from normal. Normal is the average – in this case the average between 1960 and 1989 – a standard weather average used in most assumptions of weather and climate around the globe. A one degree anomaly would be a one degree above or below normal. In this case it’s degrees C, so a one degree anomaly would be 1.8 degrees F. Nine degrees C is 16.2 degrees F.
Two amazing things stick out of this interesting piece of science art (below): The perilous looking red blobs of course – north of Alaska/Canada and west of Greenland (east of Svalbard, not shown on the map). There are similar red blobs on the eastern hemisphere view. If the water temperature was as much above normal here on the central Texas coast, at Padre Island – the water temperature would be a sizzling 105 F. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission recommends that you NEVER allow your hot tub temperature to rise above 104 degrees. Equally impressive is the blue colored – cold water anomaly surrounding the southern half of Greenland. This is melt water from the big melt going at the Ice Cap.
The meltwater pulse around Greenland is obviously enormous. One of the neat things about anomaly analysis – you don’t have to look back at previous data to see the variation. It’s right there. The anomaly would not be apparent, or would be much smaller if the area of the extra meltwater runoff was smaller. Yes the peaks are not visible without looking back, but the size of the current variation is certainly clear.
The image below is from NOAAs CIRES (Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences). Last year’s Big Melt in Greenland – what the scientists are calling the goings on in the Arctic these days, beat the previous record in 2005 by 13 percent. That’s not quite as Olympic in scale as the 23 percent record smash by arctic sea ice coverage in 2007, but very large nonetheless. This is why we are seeing this enormous meltwater pulse around the southern edge of Greenland this year – the melt is continuing. The melt will continue to increase in a similar feedback loop. Wet snow absorbs about four times more of the suns heat than dry snow, so there is a very large albedo feedback on the ice cap too.
August 15, 2008
California announces 800 megawatts of PV installed by 2012. This will double the US total. The largest in the US is 14 megawatts, in Spain it is 23 megawatts. Worldwide, 250 megawatts were installed in 2007.
Melting glacier causes flash flooding in Nunavut – The Land that Never Melts – In Kangerlussuaq too – I saw an image surfing recently, but didn’t bookmark it. Kangerlussuaq is where I filmed much of my documentary footage.
Arctic sea ice unexpectedly catches up to last year The National Snow and Ice Data Center says that over the last 30 days, Arctic sea ice coverage has dramatically disappeared – et an even faster rate than the extreme record breaking rate seen last year. Just a month ago, things were looking not so bad for Arctic sea ice, after last years “normally cold” winter. However, because of all of the extra warmth absorbed by the Arctic Ocean last summer after that extreme record low ice coverage, last winter’s sea ice was only three feet thick instead of six feet thick, compoundingthe3 melt caused by warm temperatures over the last 30 days – unexpectedly.
Storminess is increasing faster than the models predict: 20 years of satellite observations analyzed. Allan and Soden, Atmospheric Warming and the Amplification of Precipitation Extremes, Science Express, August 2008 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1160787.pdf
Breakthrough in cloud dynamic understanding: Clouds have been one of the major wildcards in climate analysis. This study provides robust conclusions that increased aerosols from man caused activities decrease cloud cover. This is a significant step towards more accurate climate models.
August 1, 2008
100 months to stop climate change before unstoppable irreversible impacts: This is a very disturbing report. (I don’t normally link to think tanks, but there is a technical discussion of methods here to justify this post.) The analysis uses IPCC data, now commonly understood as quite conservative, to make this 100 month statement. This is all too eerily similar to the previous post here (June 19) about James Hansen’s letter to Prime Minister Fukada
July 19, 2008 James Hansen’s latest Letter – We have definitely passed the climate safe point http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20080703_DearPrimeMinisterFukuda.pdf
James Hansen – Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and George Bush’s Chief Climate modeler – has determined that the safe level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is 350 ppm (today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is 385 ppm). Dr. Hansen bases his analysis on the risk of catastrophic sea level rise during this century of greater than two feet (among other things). Dr. Hansen says, by the year 2020, we must stop generating all electricity form coal without 100% carbon sequestration to be able to prevent runaway ice cap disintegration (again, among other things). If this can be accomplished we might be able to limit carbon dioxide concentration to 425 ppm and limit climate change to only a couple of degrees C warming. Hansen also notes that the last time temperatures on Earth were a couple of degrees C warmer than today (as is projected for this century by the IPCC), sea level was 80 feet higher.
July 16, 2008
The Latest Climate Cover-up from the White House:
http://www.statesman.com/green/content/news/stories/nation/07/09/0709cheneyclimate.html
July 13, 2008
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is going: After a significant breakup in March, the Arctic summer, The Wilkins is now disintegrating – in the dead of the Antarctic winter. This is the first breakup ever recorded in winter, and will very likely be the largest breakup of a single ice shelf ever recorded. Scientist speculating that this breakup would happen next summer were completely surprised by this aggressive reaction to what they believe is melting of the ice shelf from beneath by warming ocean waters.
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM2U5THKHF_index_0.html
July 12, 2008
Northern Colorado Forests are Dead, Virtually all of them: Climate change is playing a significant role in the death of a very significant portion of all of the trees in Northern Colorado. I have just returned from a scouting trip for the documentary. This is a huge catastrophe unlike anything ever experienced in the lower 48, and soon, even greater than the 3 million acre spruce bark beetle epidemic on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. I will have a complete report in the days to come.
June 19, 2008 (Happy Juneteenth!)
The Greatest Climate Scientist Alive: A tribute to James Hansen
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5790
Austin Heat Wave Day 32: 16 daily records, 14 days at 100 degrees plus. An average summer sees 11 days at 100 degrees plus – Summer starts Friday the 20th… It’s like that old joke about being a hundred degrees in the shade… The Farmer out in his field says: “Good thing were are not in the shade!”
June 8, 2008
Arctic Sea-ice Poised for a New Record
Arctic sea-ice coverage anomaly was nearly 50% greater than it was last winter, but despite this sea-ice extents are way down as of early June. The sea ice area is just about the same as it was last year when the extreme low sea-ice extents record was set. Only this year the coverage decline has been markedly greater than last year as shown in the National Snow and Ice Data Center graph below:
Last year’s record minimal sea ice extent allowed more warming in the Arctic Ocean than in many millennia, maybe a lot longer. Thinner sea ice forms over warmer water because the ice insulates the water from the cold air above. The last time these sea-ice extents were thought to have occurred was during the last thermal maximum, or hypsithermal. This was about 6,000 years ago and represents the warmest temperatures reached after the last ice age.
The increased rate of sea ice loss relative to last year, given the colder than normal winter and significantly greater sea ice coverage than normal shows that the Arctic sea-ice feedback is in full force. We have indeed crossed the threshold. Below are three charts showing January through May average surface temperatures for 2005, 2007 and 2008. The rank of these years temperatures for the period is shown in parenthesis, the temperature anomaly in the upper right corner in degrees C.
May 27, 2008
The New Climate Discourse: Alarmist or Alarming?
This will give you a little pause to think: Australia’s national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) has released a report in the journal Global Environmental Change titled: The new climate discourse: Alarmist or Alarming?
This paper attempts to determine if scientists are using appropriate terms to describe their findings. For decades, there has been debate that claims that scientists are basically exaggerating. This study analyzes the definitions of the terms used by scientists, how they are applied to the studies that are using the terms and the relative accuracy of that application. This quote from the abstract for the study reveals the outcome of the analysis:
“The discourse on climate change is in part divided between a sense of alarm and a sense of alarmism in assessments of the magnitude and urgency of the problem. The divide in the discourse among climatologists relates to tensions in the use of key phrases to describe climate change. This article reviews evidence to support claims that climate change can be viewed as ‘catastrophic’, ‘rapid’, ‘urgent’, ‘irreversible’, ‘chaotic’, and ‘worse than previously thought’. Each of these terms are imprecise and may convey a range of meaning. The method used here is to assess whether the conventional understandings of these terms are broadly consistent or inconsistent with the science, or else ambiguous. On balance, these terms are judged to be consistent with the science. Factors which divide climatologists on this discourse are also reviewed. The divide over a sense of urgency relates to disagreement on the manner and rate at which ice sheets breakdown in response to sustained warming. Whether this rate is fast or slow, the amount of time available to reduce emissions sufficient to prevent ice sheet breakdown is relatively short, given the moderate levels of warming required and the inertia of the climate and energy systems. A new discourse is emerging which underscores the scope of the problem and the scope and feasibility of solutions. This discourse differentiates itself from existing discourses which view the magnitudes of the problem or of solutions as prohibitive.”
Reference: Risbey, James, The new climate discourse: Alarmist or Alarming? CSIRO Marine Atmospheric Research, Global Environmental Change, Volume 18, 2008.
May 23rd, 2008
CO2 at Highest Levels in 800,000 Years
New highly detailed ice core analysis from Antarctica has pushed back the robust assumptions of past greenhouse gas concentrations. The new analysis shows looks at 800,000 years of ice cores up to 3,000 meters in depth. Their findings compliment widely help assumptions by the IPCC and other major scientific authorities that carbon dioxide and methane concentrations are far higher now than at any time in the past that we have highly detailed and highly accurate information.
This new information, published in the May 15 volume of Nature, show carbon dioxide to be 28% higher and methane to be 140% higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years, or the last nine ice ages.
May 10, 2008
Global Dimming and China’s New Socio-economic Revolution:
China has vowed to ramp up its socio-economic fabric to 21st century western standards. Their main thrust will be to convert their country from the world’s source of cheap goods to a more sustaining economy. One of their main goals to accomplish this is to manufacture all of parts and pieces of the goods they assemble. To date, they have generally just been the assemblers – putting together components designed and manufactured elsewhere. To compliment this fundamental change of productivity, China has vowed to not only enforce existing environmental laws, but to increase environmental standards as well. Both of these major concepts bode poorly for world climate. As China grows in affluence, so does their carbon consumption. They are already far outpacing predictions of consumption and carbon emissions. Accelerated growth will enhance these emissions, unless of course the new environmentalism decreases the emissions. This is very likely to happen: aye mate – there’s the rub!
China is in a similar socio-economic and environmental situation as the U.S was in the 1960s. The use of the automobile has become a normal part of life. Superhighways are proliferating, their manufacturing industries are undergoing rapid changes, and their pollution levels are frightening. This is quite similar to the U.S. in the 1960s. Then, in the U.S., surface waters were poisoned, our skies were an ash tray and waste was dumped wanton on the ground and in our seas and waterways. In the early 1970s the environmental revolution hit the U.S. The Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act and the Pesticide Reform Act were brought into law. On a global climatological scale, what happened next was astounding. In just a few years, our global climate changed – obviously and robustly!
Looking at the global thermometer 
records from the turn of the 20th century, two things stand out. One is that the average temperature of the globe is steadily rising. The other thing that stands out is a blip in that steadily rising temperature trend between the mid 1940s and the mid 1970s. During these years, Earth’s temperature flattened out – that is it quit rising. The reason for this cessation of the rising trend was pollution caused by industrialization after World War II. Our industrial machine was in such a hyper state at the end of the war that it was easy to transition to a completely new way of life – where consumerism and the American way dominated. The massive amount of industrialization created a literal fog in our atmosphere. This fog is called particulate pollution. It is this particulate pollution that was so readily observed as smog in the 1960s as our country became more and more polluted, and this was one of the main reasons for the environmental revolution.
The astounding part of the environmental story is: The Clean Air Act of 1970 changed our Earth’s climate. It allowed the steady warming prior to the end of World War II to continue. What the Clean Air act did was to curb the worst part of air pollution that U.S. industries had been creating. It did this by addressing the easiest and most obvious part of the problem – the smog inducing particulates. Technology to remove particulates is relatively efficient and the law was quickly enforced. Industry, in just a few years cleaned up their emissions. Then we had this huge burden of particulate pollution in the atmosphere to deal with. Because this type of pollution is relatively easy to remove, Mother Nature can quickly cleanse our atmosphere. Particulates are just that – particles of stuff, a lot of black soot, oxidized elements form combustion processes and the like – all relatively heavy and large particles. These relatively large particles can be quickly washed out of the atmosphere by rainfall, and even those that get mixed high into the upper atmosphere where there is no rain, settle out because of gravity in just a few years. Volcanic eruptions are a good example. Volcanoes eject their ash clouds high into the atmosphere above the highest of clouds. This ash, quite similar to particulate pollution, must there for rely on gravity to be cleansed from the skies. It is falls to lower elevations where rainfall can remove it in just a few years. This is one of the main reasons that volcanic eruption have no significant long term affect on our climate – their effects do not last long enough, Mother Nature cleans them up relatively quickly.
So the Clean Air Act allowed our climate to continue warming because it removed the particulate pollution from industrial emissions. The pollution was keeping a portion of the suns energy from reaching the surface of the Earth. This prevented warming. When the pollution was removed, the warming continued.
References:
Ramanthan and Carmichael, Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon Nature Geoscience, March 2008.
Ramanthan et. al., Warming trends in Asia amplified by brown cloud solar absorption, Nature, August, 2007.
Wild, Ohmura, and Makowski, Impact of global dimming and brightening on global warming, Geophysical Research Letters, volume 34, 2007.
Cohen Liepert and Stanhill, Global warming comes of age, EOS, September 2004.
Liepert et. Al., Can aerosols spin down the water cycle in a warmer and moister world? Geophysical Research Letters,Vol., 31, 2004.
Roderick and Farquhar, The cause of decreased pan evaporation over the last 50 years, Science, November, 2002.
May 4, 2008
Epidemic Outbreaks of Bark Beetle Changing Massive Forests Into Carbon Sources Worldwide:
A warming planet is killing our forests at an extraordinary rate. In Colorado alone the pine bark beetle epidemic last year grew from 1 million to 1.5 million acres. A new analysis of the climate of the American West, released in February, projects that the lodgepole and ponderosa pine forests of the American West are at risk of a near complete destruction within 3 to 5 years. Obviously this epidemic is unprecedented. It’s cause is directly related to climate warming and enhanced by forestry practices. 48 million trees have been killed in Colorado. Alaska has lost 3.3 million acres of trees. British Colombia has seen the largest outbreak with 33 million acres being destroyed in an outbreak that is 10 times larger than any ever recorded. Research from the Canadian Forest Service shows that these dead forests are now emitting carbon to the atmosphere rather than being a sink for absorbing carbon dioxide. The computer modeling from the study shows that the forests in the southwestern British Columbia outbreak changed from a small net sink of about 2 to 3 megatons per year (as forests are normally considered), to a large source of carbon of nearly 1,000 megatons over the 21 year modeling period. These carbon emissions are equal to about 5 years worth of carbon emissions from all of Canada’s automobiles combined.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v452/n7190/full/nature06777.html
April 24, 2008
China’s Record Snows Melt in Record Heat:
From NOAA “The global land surface temperature was the warmest on record for March, 3.3°F above the 20th century mean of 40.8°F. Temperatures more than 8°F above average covered much of the Asian continent. Two months after the greatest January snow cover extent on record on the Eurasian continent, the unusually warm temperatures led to rapid snow melt, and March snow cover extent on the Eurasian continent was the lowest on record.”
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2008/20080417_marchstats.html
April 22, 2008
The true cost of fossil fuels to society is greater than is calculable. If we are lucky, atmospheric carbon won’t physically destroy our planet. If we are smart, we may be able to keep it from destroying our society. I just can’t tell you guys how extremely important this is. As an engineer and a scientist – studying climate for a decade now, I have seen the most radical climate reactions that I have ever seen in the last couple of months. Antarctica is not cooling, it is warming – new satellites and new calibration analysis; The increase in Antarctic sea-ice is caused by atmospheric warming that enhances the stability of upper Antarctic ocean sea water, increasing the cooling and hence the sea ice. Last winter’s coolish temperatures were nothing abnormal; in the US it was the 47th coldest winter. Last winters average planetary warmth was something like 16th warmest. While China was having their coldest winter in 50 years, Australia was having its warmest summer ever. (Last year’s average annual temperature tied for 2nd warmest of all time) Greenland ice ratcheted up another notch in discharge last summer. The Wilkins ice sheet mini-disintegration foretells of the the big event that will happen next next year very likely leading to the loss of 5,000 square miles of ice shelf, an event unprecedented in 10,000 years. Large portions of the West Antarctic ice Sheet have speeded up by a factor of between 7 and 9 and although an under ice volcano was discovered under the WAI last year, it’s eruption was 2000 years ago. And the most alarming: Methane clathrates (frozen methane) on the floor of the largest, shallowest continental shelf in the world, off of Siberia, in the area of the world that is warming the most have started to melt. There are 1000 gigatons of methane there, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2. One third of this gas is free gas trapped beneath the ice. Natural and man caused process release only 3 gigatons of methane annually. Worldwide, there is 100 times this amount of methane, much of it at risk of release in a warmer world. The biggest extinction event ever was not the loss related to dinosaurs and an asteroid hitting the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago, but a methane gas release from the oceans that killed 90% of all species on Earth 250 million years ago.
April 19, 2008
1) Methane is starting to be released in very large quantities from the permafrost under the Laptev Sea in the Arctic. There are 1,000 gigatons of CO2 at risk on the Siberian continental shelf alone, approximately 1/3 of this methane is free gas trapped under the permafrost beneath the sea. The Earth’s normal production of methane (including mankind’s contribution) is 3 gigatons a year. Methane has 20 times the greenhouse gas potency of CO2. A very small fraction of the total methane released from the Siberian shelf will Earth’s current emission emission seem like a pittance. Once started these emissions are irreversible and will likely increase in release rate exponentially. These deposits are common throughout the world, even in temperate regions. The Laptev Sea on the north coast of Siberia, not only has the largest extent of shallow continental shelf waters on the planet, it also has the highest average annual temperature warming rate on the planet. These methane deposits on the ocean floor within and overlain by permafrost were laid down during the last ice age (or more) between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago when ocean levels were 200 to 400 feet lower and this region was dry land. This issue will be one of the major papers at the European Geophysical Union Annual Meeting this week. (Archer 2008)
2) Our carbon dioxide emissions rate is 35% greater than our scientist have projected it to be, the emission rate of increase is rising faster than projected and it’s longevity in our atmosphere is not 100 to 200 years, but more like 30,000 years. (Canadell et. al. 2007, Le Quere 2007, Schuster and Watson 2007)
3) The great Antarctic Ice Sheet, that was thought by a very large majority of scientist to be impermeable to climate change for at least a century from now, has gone to a negative mass balance – that means it has started to melt 100 years before it was supposed to. (Rignot et. al. 2008, Turner et. al. 2006, Scambos 2008)
4) Every large, mature lodgepole pine forest in Colorado and Wyoming will be dead within three to five years, killed in an unprecedented mountain pine beetle infestation . This is from the Rocky Mountain Climate Group, and organization of 17 mountain state governments and lots of other folk. Ponderosa pine is at risk with this outbreak as well. Together the lodgepole and ponderosa make up 55 million of the total 360 million forested acres in the West. Most of this forest will be destroyed in this outbreak. It’s cause is natural, it is worsened by National Forest Service burn policy, however it’s severity and breadth are most directly linked to climate change – long term drought is the most important aspect of this outbreak. Many of the other tree species in the West (and the east) are at risk of insect infestation of this biblical magnitude. There are dozens of insect pests, many of which are different species of bark beetles, which are capable of this sort of outbreak. Many of the infestations are already at historic levels like the spruce bark beetle in Alaska and Canada, the aspen leaf miner across North America and the spruce bud worm in the central Rockies.