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by 82_28 » Mon May 23, 2016 3:07 pm
by Iamwhomiam » Mon May 23, 2016 4:17 pm
by KUAN » Fri May 27, 2016 11:21 am
by 82_28 » Wed Jun 01, 2016 2:34 pm
by stillrobertpaulsen » Wed Jun 01, 2016 3:07 pm
by Luther Blissett » Thu Jun 09, 2016 10:39 pm
Arctic could become ice-free for first time in more than 100,000 years, claims leading scientist
Professor Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University predicts we could see ‘an area of less than one million square kilometres for September of this year’
The Arctic is on track to be free of sea ice this year or next for the first time in more than 100,000 years, a leading scientist has claimed.
Provisional satellite data produced by the US National Snow & Ice Data Centre shows there were just over 11.1 million square kilometres of sea ice on 1 June this year, compared to the average for the last 30 years of nearly 12.7 million square kilometres.
This difference – more than 1.5 million square kilometres – is about the same size as about six United Kingdoms.
Professor Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge University, told The Independent that the latest figures largely bore out a controversial prediction he made four years ago.
“My prediction remains that the Arctic ice may well disappear, that is, have an area of less than one million square kilometres for September of this year,” he said.
“Even if the ice doesn’t completely disappear, it is very likely that this will be a record low year. I’m convinced it will be less than 3.4 million square kilometres [the current record low].
“I think there’s a reasonable chance it could get down to a million this year and if it doesn’t do it this year, it will do it next year.
“Ice free means the central part of the Arctic and the North Pole is ice free.”
Most of the remaining ice within the Arctic Circle would be trapped among the myriad of islands along Canada’s north coast.
The last time the Arctic was clear of ice is believed to be about 100,000 to 120,000 years ago.
The rapid warming of the polar region has been linked with extreme weather events such as “bomb cyclones”, flooding in the UK and out-of-season tornadoes in the United States.
And the sea ice off the north coast of Russia, which normally insulates the water below to keep it cool, is no longer present for much of the year, allowing the sea to get significantly warmer than before.
Scientists have monitored greenhouse gas methane – once frozen on the sea bed – bubbling up to the surface at an alarming rate.
According to one study published in the journal Nature by Professor Wadhams and others, this could produce an average rise in global temperature of 0.6 degrees Celsius in just five years.
“That would be a very, very serious upward jerk to global warming,” Professor Wadhams said, saying the prospect was “frightening”.
Less sea ice also means the surface of the Earth is darker, so it absorbs more of the sun’s energy.
“When the sea ice retreats, it changes the whole situation. People are right to be concerned about the sea ice retreat and disappearance mainly because of all these other feedbacks,” Professor Wadhams added.
Sea ice is usually at its lowest in September and starts to build again when the winter sets in.
Dr Peter Gleick, a leading climatologist, said he had “no idea” if Professor Wadhams’ prediction was correct.
And he added: “If it's wrong, this kind of projection leads to climate sceptics and deniers to criticize the entire community.”
However Dr Gleick said Professor Wadhams was right to sound a warning about the rising temperatures in the region, saying it was “extraordinarily disturbing even in a world of disturbing news about accelerating climate change”.
“An ice-free - and even an ice-reduced - Arctic is leading to global impacts on weather and ecosystems, and most importantly, that the changes in the Arctic presage dramatic fundamental changes in climate throughout the globe,” he said.
“We're on a runaway train, scientists are blowing the whistle, but politicians are still shovelling coal into the engine.”
Professor Jennifer Francis, of Rutgers University in the US, who has studied the effect of the Arctic on the weather in the rest of the northern hemisphere, was also sceptical about Professor Wadhams' prediction, saying it was “highly unlikely” to come true this year.
She said she thought this would not happen until sometime between 2030 and 2050.
But Professor Francis stressed: “We are definitely looking at a very unusual situation up in the Arctic.
“The ice is very low and there have been record-breaking low amounts of ice in January, February, March, April and now May, so this is very worrisome.
“I think we are going to see perhaps a new record [in September], that’s very possible.”
by Luther Blissett » Wed Jun 15, 2016 12:12 pm
Earth's hot streak continues with warmest May since at least 1880
Another month, another shattered global temperature record.
According to preliminary readings from NASA, May 2016 was the warmest such month on record for the planet, dating back to 1880. Global average surface temperatures were 0.93 degrees Celsius, or 1.67 degrees Fahrenheit, above average for the month, beating out the old record, which was set in May 2014.
This makes May the 8th straight warmest month on record in NASA's database. According to the World Meteorological Organization, it was also the warmest northern hemisphere spring on record, in part due to much milder than average conditions in the Arctic.
If the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) also ranks May as the warmest such month, it would make it the 13th straight warmest month in NOAA's records, which has never happened before. (Although the two agencies use similar data, they differ in how they analyze global temperature measurements.)
Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York has already predicted that 2016 will be the warmest year on record, beating the record set in 2015. Scientists at NOAA have also said such a record is likely this year.
The end of the streak?
There are signs that the streak of record-breaking months is coming to an end, as ocean temperatures cool in the tropical Pacific Ocean and a La Niña event develops.
Although it came close, May was the first month out of the past eight months that failed to exceed the 20th century average by at least 1 degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Until October, that 1-degree threshold had not been crossed since NASA's global temperature records began, and it was then exceeded every month from October 2015 through April 2016.
The threshold is relevant since the Paris Climate Agreement specifies that countries should work to keep human-caused global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by the year 2100.
Using preindustrial temperature estimates (precise global temperature data from 1750 is not available), the October through April period may have reached that 2-degree threshold, albeit briefly.
May's data means that the 12-month running average of global temperatures has now hit 1-degree Celsius, or 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, above the 1951-1980 average, according to climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf.
The Paris Agreement also contains language referring to the need to limit global warming to as low as 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above the preindustrial average, which was almost certainly reached during that January through April period.
According to an analysis from the news and research group Climate Central, through April, the globe had come close to the 1.5-degree threshold.
However, that analysis compared temperatures to the period from 1881-1910, which are the earliest reliable records from thermometers. Actual preindustrial temperatures are thought to have been even cooler than this baseline shows, which would put the warming above the 1.5-degree line.
But global average temperatures are cooling down a bit, relatively speaking.
Since February set a record for the most unusually mild month, with a temperature anomaly of 1.33 degrees Celsius, or 2.39 degrees Fahrenheit, above average, the monthly temperature anomalies have declined by an average of 0.13 degrees Celsius per month.
If this continues, then June is likely to be close to the warmest such month in NASA's database, but a slightly faster cooling would easily end the streak.
The Japan Meteorological Agency, which also tracks global temperatures, ranked May as the second-warmest such month on record, coming in just 0.01 degrees Celsius cooler than May of last year.
El Niño on top of human-caused global warming
The record warmth during 2015-16 was due to a combination of human-caused global warming and a record strong El Niño event.
Now that a La Niña is developing, though, global temperatures are likely to be dampened somewhat.
You can think of El Niño as a driver pressing the gas pedal on a car all the way to the floor, while La Niña is more like a driver still pressing the gas, but at a more moderate (and less dangerous) pace.
However, even La Niña years have been warming as a result of long-term global warming, and it's possible the developing La Niña could set a record for the mildest La Niña year.
For climate scientists, what matters is the long-term trend over decades to centuries, making monthly records much less significant compared to the steady increase in temperatures throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
by Burnt Hill » Sat Jun 18, 2016 11:35 pm
Eastern US needs 'connectivity' to help species escape climate change
For plants and animals fleeing rising temperatures, varying precipitation patterns and other effects of climate change, the eastern United States will need improved "climate connectivity" for these species to have a better shot at survival.
Western areas of the U.S. provide greater temperature ranges and fewer human interruptions than eastern landscapes, allowing plants and animals there to move toward more hospitable climates with fewer obstacles. A new study has found that only 2 percent of the eastern U.S. provides the kind of climate connectivity required by species that will likely need to migrate, compared to 51 percent of the western United States.
The research, reported June 13 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for the first time quantifies the concept of climate connectivity in the United States. The paper suggests that creating climate-specific corridors between natural areas could improve that connectivity to as much as 65 percent nationwide, boosting the chances of survival by more species. The issue is especially critical in the Southeast, which could provide routes to cooler northern climates as temperatures rise.
"Species are going to have to move in response to climate change, and we can act to both facilitate movement and create an environment that will prevent loss of biodiversity without a lot of pain to ourselves," said Jenny McGuire, a research scientist in the School of Biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "If we really start to be strategic about planning to prevent biodiversity loss, we can help species adjust effectively to climate change."
Creating and maintaining connections between natural areas has long been thought critical to allowing plants and animals to move in search of suitable climate conditions, she explained. Some species will have to move hundreds of kilometers over the course of a half-century.
McGuire and her collaborators set out to determine the practicality of that kind of travel and test whether these human initiatives could improve migration to cooler areas. Using detailed maps of human impact created by David Theobald at Conservation Partners in Fort Collins, Colorado, they distinguished natural areas from areas disturbed by human activity across the United States. They then calculated the coolest temperatures that could be found by moving within neighboring natural areas.
Co-authors Tristan Nuñez from the University of California Berkeley, Joshua Lawler from the University of Washington, Brad McRae from the Nature Conservancy and others created a program called Climate Linkage Mapper. They then used this program to find the easiest pathways across climate gradients and human-disturbed regions to connect natural areas.
"A lot of these land areas are very fragmented and broken up," McGuire said. "We studied what could happen if we were to provide additional connectivity that would allow species to move across the landscape through climate corridors. We asked how far they could actually go and what would be the coolest temperatures they could find."
With its relatively dense human population and smaller mountains, the eastern part of the United States fell short on climate connectivity. The western part of the country - with its tall mountains, substantial undisturbed natural areas and strict conservation policies - provided much better climate connectivity.
Eastern US needs 'connectivity' to help species escape climate change
Georgia Tech research scientist Jenny McGuire is interested in spatial questions about the ecological and evolutionary implications of climate change. In a new paper, she and collaborators quantify the concept of climate connectivity in the …more
Improving connectivity would require rehabilitating forests and planting natural habitats adjacent to interruptions such as large agricultural fields or other areas where natural foliage has been destroyed. It could also mean building natural overpasses that would allow animals to cross highways, helping them avoid collisions with vehicles.
Not only will animals have to move, but they'll also need to track changes in the environment and food, such as specific prey for carnivores and the right plants for herbivores. Some birds and large animals may be able to make that adjustment, but many smaller creatures may struggle to track the food and climate they need.
"A lot of them are going to have a hard time," said McGuire. "For plants and animals in the East, there is a higher potential for extinction due to an inability to adapt to climate change. We have a high diversity of amphibians and other species that are going to struggle."
The negative impacts of climate change won't affect all species equally, McGuire said. Species with small ranges or those with specialist diets or habitats will struggle the most.
"Not all plants and animals will have to move," she explained. "There is a subset of them that will be able to hunker down where they are. There will be some species that are really widespread and will end up just having some population losses. But especially for species that have smaller ranges, there will be some loss of biodiversity as they are unable to jump across agricultural fields or major roadways."
The Southeast, especially the coastal plains from Louisiana through Virginia, could create a bottleneck for species trying to move north away from rising temperatures and sea levels. "The Southeast ends up being a really important area for a lot of vertebrate species that we know are going to have to move into the Appalachian area and even potentially farther north," she added.
In future work, the researchers hope to examine individual species to determine which ones are most likely to struggle with the changing climate, and which areas of the country are likely to be most impacted by conflicts between humans and relocating animals.
"We see a lot of species' distributions really start to wink out after about 50 years, but it is tricky to look at future predictions because we will have a lot of habitat loss predicted using our models," McGuire said. "Change is perpetual, but we are going to have to scramble to prepare for this."
Explore further: Changing climate may leave some species homeless
More information: Achieving climate connectivity in a fragmented landscape, PNAS, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1602817113
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences search and more info website
by Harvey » Wed Jun 29, 2016 8:07 pm
Naomi Klein on the racism that underlies climate change inaction The Saturday Paper, Jun 25, 2016
The most important lesson to take from all this is that there is no way to confront the climate crisis as a technocratic problem, in isolation. It must be seen in the context of austerity and privatisation, of colonialism and militarism, and of the various systems of othering needed to sustain them all. The connections and intersections between them are glaring, and yet so often resistance to them is highly compartmentalised. The anti-austerity people rarely talk about climate change, the climate change people rarely talk about war or occupation.
Overcoming these disconnections – strengthening the threads tying together our various issues and movements – is the most pressing task of anyone concerned with social and economic justice. It is the only way to build a counterpower sufficiently robust to win against the forces protecting the highly profitable but increasingly untenable status quo.
by Iamwhomiam » Thu Jun 30, 2016 12:40 am
by Iamwhomiam » Thu Jun 30, 2016 12:52 am
by Luther Blissett » Thu Jun 30, 2016 11:05 am
‘Unprecedented’: Scientists declare ‘global climate emergency’ after jet stream crosses equator
Climate scientists this week expressed alarm after “unprecedented” data showed the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream crossing the Equator.
In a column on Tuesday, environmental blogger Robert Scribbler noted that the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream had merged with the Southern Hemisphere Jet Stream.
“It’s the very picture of weather weirding due to climate change. Something that would absolutely not happen in a normal world,” he wrote. “Something, that if it continues, basically threatens seasonal integrity.”
“Like many extreme events resulting from human-forced climate change — this co-mingling of upper level airs from one Hemisphere with another is pretty fracking strange,” Scribbler explained. “Historically, the Tropics — which produce the tallest and thickest air mass in the world — have served as a mostly impenetrable barrier to upper level winds moving from one Hemisphere to another. But as the Poles have warmed due to human-forced climate change, the Hemispherical Jet Streams have moved out of the Middle Latitudes more and more. ”
“That’s bad news for seasonality,” he continued. “You get this weather-destabilizing and extreme weather generating mixing of seasons that is all part of a very difficult to deal with ‘Death of Winter’ type scenario.”
University of Ottawa climate scientist Paul Beckwith called the new behavior “unprecedented.”
“Our climate system behaviour continues to behave in new and scary ways that we have never anticipated, or seen before,” Beckwith observed. “Welcome to climate chaos. We must declare a global climate emergency.”
In a YouTube video, Beckwith said that the jet stream behavior signaled “massive hits to the food supply” and “massive geopolitical unrest.”
Watch Beckwith’s YouTube video below.
http://youtu.be/CKasUm77D0U
by brainpanhandler » Thu Jun 30, 2016 4:04 pm
Luther Blissett » Thu Jun 30, 2016 10:05 am wrote:That full Naomi Klein speech is great.
How bad is global warming? Today, the signs are that it is very bad.‘Unprecedented’: Scientists declare ‘global climate emergency’ after jet stream crosses equator
Climate scientists this week expressed alarm after “unprecedented” data showed the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream crossing the Equator.
In a column on Tuesday, environmental blogger Robert Scribbler noted that the Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream had merged with the Southern Hemisphere Jet Stream.
“It’s the very picture of weather weirding due to climate change. Something that would absolutely not happen in a normal world,” he wrote. “Something, that if it continues, basically threatens seasonal integrity.”
“Like many extreme events resulting from human-forced climate change — this co-mingling of upper level airs from one Hemisphere with another is pretty fracking strange,” Scribbler explained. “Historically, the Tropics — which produce the tallest and thickest air mass in the world — have served as a mostly impenetrable barrier to upper level winds moving from one Hemisphere to another. But as the Poles have warmed due to human-forced climate change, the Hemispherical Jet Streams have moved out of the Middle Latitudes more and more. ”
“That’s bad news for seasonality,” he continued. “You get this weather-destabilizing and extreme weather generating mixing of seasons that is all part of a very difficult to deal with ‘Death of Winter’ type scenario.”
University of Ottawa climate scientist Paul Beckwith called the new behavior “unprecedented.”
“Our climate system behaviour continues to behave in new and scary ways that we have never anticipated, or seen before,” Beckwith observed. “Welcome to climate chaos. We must declare a global climate emergency.”
In a YouTube video, Beckwith said that the jet stream behavior signaled “massive hits to the food supply” and “massive geopolitical unrest.”
Watch Beckwith’s YouTube video below.
http://youtu.be/CKasUm77D0U
Claim that jet stream crossing equator is ‘climate emergency’ is utter nonsense
Two bloggers have made a stunning claim that has spread like wildfire on the Internet: They say the Northern Hemisphere jet stream, the high-altitude river of winds that separates cold air from warm air, has done something new and outrageous. They say it has crossed the equator, joining the jet stream in the Southern Hemisphere. One said this signifies that the jet stream is ‘wrecked‘, the other said it means we have a “global climate emergency.”
But these shrill claims have no validity — air flow between the hemispheres occurs routinely. The claims are unsupported and unscientific, and they demonstrate the danger of wild assertions made by non-experts reaching and misleading the masses.
...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/cap ... -nonsense/
by 82_28 » Thu Jun 30, 2016 4:35 pm
by Luther Blissett » Thu Jun 30, 2016 4:41 pm
Don't really disagree. Scribbler, for example, has written some excellent pieces on climate. And I've seen plenty of people without credentials who conduct more cogent analyses than those that do. But non-specialists who are self-taught do have an obligation to know where their expertise starts and stop and when to consult others, because if they cross the line and make mistakes - their lack of credentials is among the first things people notice.
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