How Bad Is Global Warming?

[Luther Blissett]

This any good to you?

http://reason.com/blog/2016/02/05/hotte ... emperature

Unfortunately not. It is useful to see the difference in the later 20th c vs. the broader 20th c range used in other sources.

I can't even find the baseline norm from which these temperatures deviate! If I had that I could just add the two.

Like the December figures I posted about (with caveats) a few pages back which I now believe to be erroneous, I want to uncover the hottest single month since record-keeping began. It is most likely July 2015, but I also suspect December 2015 and January 2016 for suspects.

I did not know until I started this hunt that July is usually the hottest month globally. I assumed that northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere summers were equals.

[Joe Hillshoist]

I think the difference between July and January temp wise is pretty small.

You're looking for global baseline temps from about 1950 to 80 or something similar? I thought they were on this thread somewhere actually.

[Nordic]

So were you in LA in 98?
Did it rain much then?

I missed that one. Was living in Austin then.

When its El Nino here we get really hot dry weather. And wet with la nina. probably the opposite of what you guys get. In '98 one of the worst droughts in Australian history really got going.

there were plenty of El Ninos betweeen 1990 and 2010 and in parts of se Australia most of that time was spent in drought.

Yeah and you guys have Christmas I'm summer, too, near the longest sunniest day of the year which to us seems so .... Weird!!

[Joe Hillshoist]

Yeah and you guys have Christmas I'm summer, too, near the longest sunniest day of the year which to us seems so .... Weird!!

I feel the same about you down there in the "northern" hemisphere.

I've never experienced a winter Christmas/NY.

Its only been the last few years that we've started changing the traditional Chrissie dinner (Turkey!!! FFS) to something more appropriate for summer and Australia. Think seafood - prawns (shrimp to you guys apparently), snapper, whiting, etc etc, salads. Beer.

Its also New Years tho. It seems more appropriate to me to celebrate a NY during warm weather. The Aussie summer "silly season" goes from mid December till the end of January and ends with invasion i mean Australia day on the 26th of jan.

Its a different thing tho. Its more a celebration of being alive without the connotations of winter solstice and the life giving sun returning.

[seemslikeadream]

Scientists are floored by what’s happening in the Arctic right now

By Chris Mooney February 18

Temperature anomalies for January, 2016. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies
New data from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggest that January of 2016 was, for the globe, a truly extraordinary month. Coming off the hottest year ever recorded (2015), January saw the greatest departure from average of any month on record, according to data provided by NASA.

[January was the ninth straight month of record breaking global warmth]

But as you can see in the NASA figure above, the record breaking heat wasn’t uniformly distributed — it was particularly pronounced at the top of the world, showing temperature anomalies above 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the 1951 to 1980 average in this region.

Indeed, NASA provides a “zonal mean” version of the temperature map above, which shows how the temperature departures from average change based on one’s latitude location on the Earth. As you can see, things get especially warm, relative to what the Earth is used to, as you enter the very high latitudes:


(NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies)
Global warming has long been known to be particularly intense in the Arctic — a phenomenon known as “Arctic amplification” — but even so, lately the phenomenon has been extremely pronounced.

[This is where the Earth is most vulnerable to big swings in climate]

This unusual Arctic heat has been accompanied by a new record low level for Arctic sea ice extent during the normally ice-packed month of January, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center — over 400,000 square miles below average for the month. And of course, that is closely tied to warm Arctic air temperatures.

“We’ve looked at the average January temperatures, and we look at what we call the 925 millibar level, about 3,000 feet up in the atmosphere,” says Mark Serreze, the center’s director. “And it was, I would say, absurdly warm across the entire Arctic Ocean.” The center reports temperature anomalies at this altitude of “more than 6 degrees Celsius (13 degrees Fahrenheit) above average” for the month.

The low sea ice situation has now continued into February. Current ice extent is well below levels at the same point in 2012, which went on to set the current record for the lowest sea ice minimum extent:


(National Snow and Ice Data Center)
“We’re way down, we’re at a record low for this time of year right now,” says Serreze. When it comes to the rest of 2016 and the coming summer and fall season when ice melts across the Arctic and reaches its lowest extent, he says, “we are starting out in a deep hole.”

So what’s causing it all? It’s a complicated picture, say scientists, but it’s likely much of it has to do with the very strong El Niño event that has carried over from 2015. But that’s not necessarily the only factor.

Here's what it means to have the hottest year on record - again
Play Video2:15
Researchers say 2015 was the hottest year on record, and that it "smashed" the previous record, which was 2014. The Post's Chris Mooney explains what that could mean for weather patterns, the Paris climate deal and 2016. (Gillian Brockell,Chris Mooney/TWP)
“We’ve got this huge El Niño out there, we have the warm blob in the northeast Pacific, the cool blob in the Atlantic, and this ridiculously warm Arctic,” says Jennifer Francis, a climate researcher at Rutgers University who focuses on the Arctic and has argued that Arctic changes are changing mid-latitude weather by causing wobbles in the jet stream. “All these things happening at the same time that have never happened before.”

Serreze agrees that the El Niño has something to do with what’s happening in the Arctic. “I think this is more than coincidence. That we have this very strong El Niño at the same time when we have this absurd Arctic warmth. But exactly what the details are on that, I don’t think we can say right now,” he says.

[Why the U.S. is cutting carbon emissions no matter what happens with the Supreme Court]

In Alaska, matters have been quite warm but not record-breaking this winter, says Rick Thoman, climate science and services manager for the National Weather Service in the state.

“It’s been another warm winter in Alaska,” Thoman says. “No other way to put it. This is the third in a row that’s been significantly warmer than normal.” Alaska’s winter so far (taking into account the months of November, December and January) has been the third warmest on record since 1925, he says.

Still, it all fits a by-now familiar picture of an Arctic warming up considerably faster than the mid-latitudes, with consequences that could extend far outside of the polar region, says Rafe Pomerance, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who sits on the National Academy of Sciences’ Polar Research Board.

Impacts of Arctic warming are usually considered in isolation, and that’s a mistake, he says. “It’s unraveling, every piece of it is unraveling, they’re all in lockstep together,” Pomerance says. “What tends to happen is, everybody nationally reports on the latest piece of news, which is about one system. You hear about the sea ice absent the temperature trend. So you really have to think of it as a whole.”

Indeed, impacts of Arctic warming include the melting of major Arctic glaciers and Greenland (containing the potential for up to 7 meters of sea level rise if it were to melt entirely), the thawing of carbon rich permafrost (which could add to the burden of atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions) and signs of worsening wildfires across the boreal forests of Alaska, to name a few.

If the Arctic is this warm in January and February, then when real warmth comes later this year, these will all be areas to watch.

“I think this winter is going to get studied like crazy, for quite a while,” says Francis. “It’s a very interesting time.”

[smoking since 1879]

methane anyone?

[Iamwhomiam]

Thanks for posting Mooney's WP article, slad.

Luther, I believe it has what you've been looking for. Subtract the temperature anomaly to derive the baseline or average temperature.

WIki has quite a bit on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

Here is a good history (too extensive for posting): https://www.aip.org/history/climate/20ctrend.htm

[Joe Hillshoist]

methane anyone?

I really hope not.

[Joe Hillshoist]

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-21/t ... ji/7187104

Relief efforts in Fiji have been hampered after a category five cyclone downed powerlines across large parts of the Pacific island nation, aid agencies say.
...
Disaster management officials in Fiji are assessing the damage from one of the Southern Hemisphere's most powerful storms on record, with reports of widespread devastation and one death.

There were reports entire villages were destroyed by the category-five storm — the highest possible rating — and fears for the safety of those living in remote areas.

Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston made landfall on the main island Viti Levu on Saturday, packing winds of up to 230 kilometres per hour with gusts of up to 325 kilometres per hour.

They are now calling it the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Southern Hemisphere.

[Iamwhomiam]

I was reading about that yesterday, Joe. Here's the latest,Video and photos at link.

'Monster' Tropical Cyclone Winston reenergizes as it punishes Fiji

By Kevin Conlon and Joshua Berlinger, CNN

Updated 8:48 PM ET, Sat February 20, 2016 | Video Source: CNN

(CNN)The most powerful storm on record in the Southern Hemisphere slammed straight into Fiji late Saturday, delivering the first crushing blows of a pounding that is expected to last for days on the tiny island nation.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center estimated Tropical Cyclone Winston's winds reached 184 mph in the hours before it made landfall about 7 p.m. Saturday (2 a.m. ET).

"Winston was a monster of a cyclone," Fiji resident Nazeem Kasim told CNN. "I have not experienced anything like this before in my life, nor has my 60-year-old father."

The worst of the storm then went back out to sea, but only after wreaking havoc on the tourist hot spot with heavy flooding, rain and damaging winds. It could still end up hitting the South Pacific nation even more over the coming days.

The Fiji Broadcasting Corp. reported an elderly man was killed when a roof fell on him.

There are no other reports of other fatalities, and the full extent of the damage "is yet to be ascertained," according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The government announced on Twitter that more than 750 evacuation centers had been activated.

Photos shared on social media with the hashtag #PrayForFiji showed an idyllic paradise beset by flooded streets, roofless houses and downed palm trees.

"It is likely that smaller villages across Fiji will have suffered the most, given their infrastructures would be too weak to withstand the power of a category 5 cyclone," said Suva resident Alice Clements, a spokeswoman for UNICEF in the Pacific.

"Families may have lost their homes and crops, therefore leaving them without shelter, food and a livelihood. There is also considerable risk for those that live by the sea or rivers as flash flooding and river flooding could occur due to heavy rains."

Fears of mudslides, coastal inundation

Fiji, an archipelago collectively about the size of New Jersey, lies in the South Pacific Ocean some 1,800 miles from Australia's east coast (by comparison, Hawaii is about 2,500 miles from Los Angeles). Most of the nation's 900,000 residents live on one of two main islands: Viti Levu or Vanua Levu.

Although not hit directly, the capital of Suva endured "damaging gale force winds, heavy rain and power outages." Clements, who was in Suva when the storm struck, said the city experienced "destructive, howling winds and the sound of rivets lifting from roofs a constant throughout the night."

The Red Cross said it was "fully prepared and on standby."

"We are well-organized and prepared," said Eseroma Ledua, operations manager at the Fiji Red Cross. "We have prepositioned relief items sufficient for 12,000 people in our headquarters in Suva and have mobilized over 300 staff and volunteers across our 14 branches nationwide.'


This map showed a forecast track for the storm from early Sunday through early Wednesday Fiji time.

Widespread flash flooding and coastal inundation -- flooding in normally dry land -- "is likely as storm surges may push the sea inland several hundred meters," the Red Cross said.

Mudslides are a concern.

"This is a mountainous nation, and that means any heavy rainfall will filter down to the lower elevations -- meaning landslides, mudslides and flooding," said CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam.

The western city of Nadi, on Fiji's main island, suffered minor wind damage but experienced extensive flooding, reported a television team from CNN affiliate TVNZ.

"You could hear things blowing around outside and even inside air got through the cracks and some things were blowing around my room," reporter Jessica Mutch said. Many trees were uprooted.

"You can really see that the infrastructure is not coping with the volume of water and things are getting blocked up," she said.

A nationwide curfew remained in effect and all flights were canceled.

Fiji PM: 'we must stick together'

Had it occurred in the Atlantic, Winston would have been a Category 5 hurricane, but because of hemispheric nomenclature, it's dubbed a cyclone. (In the Northwest Pacific, it would be a typhoon; all three are the same weather phenomenon).

No matter what you call it, Fiji Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama had his own name for it: an "assault."

"As a nation, we are facing an ordeal of the most grievous kind," Bainimarama said. "We must stick together as a people and look after each other."

Bainimarama, who said that the government is "thoroughly prepared to deal with this crisis," declared a state of emergency that will be in effect for the next 30 days, according to the Fiji Times.

Record-setting winds

According to CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar, while Winston weakened as it moved over land -- as these types of storms do -- it has since reintensified, and with the El Niño-warmed water serving as fuel, Winston's eye has reformed.

CNN meteorologist Michael Guy said Winston is expected to "keep strength as it continues on its path in open waters," but said "it will weaken Tuesday or Wednesday once it hits cooler waters and stronger shear."

Winston's 184 mph winds smashed the previous record for a Southern Hemisphere cyclone. According to Colorado State University hurricane expert Philip Klotzbach, both Cyclone Zoe, which battered the Solomon Islands in 2002, and Cyclone Monica, which walloped Australia in 2006, previously shared the record with their estimated winds of 178 mph.

The most powerful such storm on record in any hemisphere was Hurricane Patricia, which was estimated to have hit 200 mph before petering out over southwestern Mexico in October.



CNN's Brandon Miller, Archith Seshadri and Tina Burnside contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/20/us/tropical-cyclone-winston-fiji/

[Joe Hillshoist]

Seen photos from dad's home town today. Some people have lost everything.

If we didn't have a baby due in two days I'd be volunteering to head over to help rebuild.

We were in Fiji last year in August and were in Nadi/Nandi one day and it pissed down with rain. The streets were starting to flood and drains were struggling after only an inch or two of rain.

[Luther Blissett]

Seas Are Rising at Fastest Rate in Last 28 Centuries

The worsening of tidal flooding in American coastal communities is largely a consequence of greenhouse gases from human activity, and the problem will grow far worse in coming decades, scientists reported Monday.

Those emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, are causing the ocean to rise at the fastest rate since at least the founding of ancient Rome, the scientists said. They added that in the absence of human emissions, the ocean surface would be rising less rapidly and might even be falling.

The increasingly routine tidal flooding is making life miserable in places like Miami Beach; Charleston, S.C.; and Norfolk, Va., even on sunny days.

Though these types of floods often produce only a foot or two of standing saltwater, they are straining life in many towns by killing lawns and trees, blocking neighborhood streets and clogging storm drains, polluting supplies of freshwater and sometimes stranding entire island communities for hours by overtopping the roads that tie them to the mainland.

Such events are just an early harbinger of the coming damage, the new research suggests.

“I think we need a new way to think about most coastal flooding,” said Benjamin H. Strauss, the primary author of one of two related studies released on Monday. “It’s not the tide. It’s not the wind. It’s us. That’s true for most of the coastal floods we now experience.”

In the second study, scientists reconstructed the level of the sea over time and confirmed that it is most likely rising faster than at any point in 28 centuries, with the rate of increase growing sharply over the past century — largely, they found, because of the warming that scientists have said is almost certainly caused by human emissions.

They also confirmed previous forecasts that if emissions were to continue at a high rate over the next few decades, the ocean could rise as much as three or four feet by 2100.

Experts say the situation would then grow far worse in the 22nd century and beyond, likely requiring the abandonment of many coastal cities.

The findings are yet another indication that the stable climate in which human civilization has flourished for thousands of years, with a largely predictable ocean permitting the growth of great coastal cities, is coming to an end.

“I think we can definitely be confident that sea-level rise is going to continue to accelerate if there’s further warming, which inevitably there will be,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, a professor of ocean physics at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, in Germany, and co-author of one of the papers, published online Monday by an American journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In a report issued to accompany that scientific paper, a climate research and communications organization in Princeton, N.J., Climate Central, used the new findings to calculate that roughly three-quarters of the tidal flood days now occurring in towns along the East Coast would not be happening in the absence of the rise in the sea level caused by human emissions.

The lead author of that report, Dr. Strauss, said the same was likely true on a global scale, in any coastal community that has had an increase of saltwater flooding in recent decades.

The rise in the sea level contributes only in a limited degree to the huge, disastrous storm surges accompanying hurricanes like Katrina and Sandy. Proportionally, it has a bigger effect on the nuisance floods that can accompany what are known as king tides.

The change in frequency of those tides is striking. For instance, in the decade from 1955 to 1964 at Annapolis, Md., an instrument called a tide gauge measured 32 days of flooding; in the decade from 2005 to 2014, that jumped to 394 days.

Flood days in Charleston jumped from 34 in the earlier decade to 219 in the more recent, and in Key West, Fla., the figure jumped from no flood days in the earlier decade to 32 in the more recent.

The new research was led by Robert E. Kopp, an earth scientist at Rutgers University who has won respect from his colleagues by bringing elaborate statistical techniques to bear on longstanding problems, like understanding the history of the global sea level.

Based on extensive geological evidence, scientists already knew that the sea level rose drastically at the end of the last ice age, by almost 400 feet, causing shorelines to retreat up to a hundred miles in places. They also knew that the sea level had basically stabilized, like the rest of the climate, over the past several thousand years, the period when human civilization arose.

But there were small variations of climate and sea level over that period, and the new paper is the most exhaustive attempt yet to clarify them.

The paper shows the ocean to be extremely sensitive to small fluctuations in the Earth’s temperature. The researchers found that when the average global temperature fell by a third of a degree Fahrenheit in the Middle Ages, for instance, the surface of the ocean dropped by about three inches in 400 years. When the climate warmed slightly, that trend reversed.

“Physics tells us that sea-level change and temperature change should go hand-in-hand,” Dr. Kopp said. “This new geological record confirms it.”

In the 19th century, as the Industrial Revolution took hold, the ocean began to rise briskly, climbing about eight inches since 1880. That sounds small, but it has caused extensive erosion worldwide, costing billions.

Due largely to human emissions, global temperatures have jumped about 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit since the 19th century. The sea is rising at what appears to be an accelerating pace, lately reaching a rate of about a foot per century.

One of the authors of the new paper, Dr. Rahmstorf, had previously published estimates suggesting the sea could rise as much as five or six feet by 2100. But with the improved calculations from the new paper, his latest upper estimate is three to four feet.

That means Dr. Rahmstorf’s forecast is now more consistent with calculations issued in 2013 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that periodically reviews and summarizes climate research. That body found that continued high emissions might produce a rise in the sea of 1.7 to 3.2 feet over the 21st century.

In an interview, Dr. Rahmstorf said the rise would eventually reach five feet and far more — the only question was how long it would take. Scientists say the recent climate agreement negotiated in Paris is not remotely ambitious enough to forestall a significant melting of Greenland and Antarctica, though if fully implemented, it may slow the pace somewhat.

“Ice simply melts faster when the temperatures get higher,” Dr. Rahmstorf said. “That’s just basic physics.”

[Luther Blissett]

Earth is warming 50x faster than when it comes out of an ice age
A major new study includes some scary implications about how rapidly humans are changing the Earth’s climate

Recently, The Guardian reported on a significant new study published in Nature Climate Change, finding that even if we meet our carbon reduction targets and stay below the 2°C global warming threshold, sea level rise will eventually inundate many major coastal cities around the world.

20% of the world’s population will eventually have to migrate away from coasts swamped by rising oceans. Cities including New York, London, Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Calcutta, Jakarta and Shanghai would all be submerged.

The authors looked at past climate change events and model simulations of the future. They found a clear, strong relationship between the total amount of carbon pollution humans emit, and how far global sea levels will rise. The issue is that ice sheets melt quite slowly, but because carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for a long time, the eventual melting and associated sea level rise are effectively locked in.

As a result, the study authors found that due to the carbon pollution humans have emitted so far, we’ve committed the planet to an eventual sea level rise of 1.7 meters (5.5 feet). If we manage to stay within the 1 trillion ton carbon budget, which we hope will keep the planet below 2°C warming above pre-industrial levels, sea levels will nevertheless rise a total of about 9 meters (30 feet). If we continue on a fossil fuel-heavy path, we could trigger a staggering eventual 50 meters (165 feet) of sea level rise.

Predicting how quickly sea levels will rise is a challenge. However, two other studies just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the Antarctic ice sheet could melt more quickly than previously thought, and thus contribute to relatively rapid sea level rise. Over the past century, global sea level has risen faster than at any time in the past two millennia, and most of the recent sea level rise is due to human-caused global warming. Several feet of sea level rise this century is likely, with a possibility of 5 feet or more.

The Nature Climate Change study didn’t just look at sea level rise; it also looked at global temperature changes. Earth’s sharpest climate changes over the past half million years have occurred when the planet transitions from a ‘glacial’ to ‘interglacial’ period, and vice-versa.

Right now we’re in a warm interglacial period, having come out of the last ice age (when New York City and Chicago were under an ice sheet) about 12,000 years ago. During that transition, the Earth’s average surface temperature warmed about 4°C, but that temperature rise occurred over a period of about 10,000 years.

In contrast, humans have caused nearly 1°C warming over the past 150 years, and we could trigger anywhere from another 1 to 4°C warming over the next 85 years, depending on how much more carbon we pump into the atmosphere.

What humans are in the process of doing to the climate makes the transition out of the last ice age look like a casual stroll through the park. We’re already warming the Earth about 20 times faster than during the ice age transition, and over the next century that rate could increase to 50 times faster or more. We’re in the process of destabilizing the global climate far more quickly than happens even in some of the most severe natural climate change events.

That rapid climate destabilization is what has climate scientists worried. It’s faster than many species can adapt to, and could therefore cause widespread extinctions, among other dangerous climate change consequences. Coastal flooding in places like Florida has already become much more common than it was just 50 years ago, and sea level rise is expected to keep accelerating.

As Aaron Goldner, one of the Nature Climate Change study authors told me, the next 10–20 years are critical in determining which path we follow. There’s a big difference between an eventual sea level rise of 1.7 meters and one of 9 meters.

The sooner we transition away from fossil fuels and cut our carbon pollution, the better we’ll be able to limit the climate destabilization and associated damages. It’s a sobering thought: our children, grandchildren, and future generations for hundreds, even thousands of years will feel the impacts of the choices we make over the next decade.

[Luther Blissett]

This could be moved into the data dump at any time, but I think it should stay here in case any deniers show up / come back and want to debate. It was important rhetorical practice.

Arctic warming: Rapidly increasing temperatures are 'possibly catastrophic' for planet, climate scientist warns
Dr Peter Gleick said there is a growing body of 'pretty scary' evidence that higher temperatures are driving the creation of dangerous storms in parts of the northern hemisphere

The rapidly warming Arctic could have a “catastrophic” effect on the planet’s climate, a leading scientist has warned.

Dr Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute in California, said there was a growing body of “pretty scary” evidence that higher temperatures in the Arctic were driving the creation of dangerous storms in parts of the northern hemisphere.

According to a graph on the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre’s website, there were 14.2 million km squared of sea ice on 24 February. On an average year over the last three decades, it would take until about 29 April for there to be as little sea ice as temperatures warm in the spring.

Since about 10 February, the area covered by sea ice has been noticeably below any of the last 30 years as the Arctic has experienced record-breaking temperatures of about 4C higher than the 1951-1980 average for the region.

Dr Gleick posted the sea ice graph on Twitter with the message: “What is happening in the Arctic now is unprecedented and possibly catastrophic.”

And, in emails to The Independent, he explained: “The current trend is below any previous year. What is alarming is how far below any previous ice extent the current data are [and] how early it is for there to be this little ice.

“It is certainly possible that the ice extent will track back up if cold enough weather returns, for long enough. It is just very unlikely.”

While such changes will have a harmful effect on polar bears, walruses and other elements of the Arctic ecosystem, Dr Gleick said the potential for catastrophe was from “the global implications of those changes”.

“The evidence is very clear that rapid and unprecedented changes are happening in the Arctic,” he wrote.

“What is much less clear is the complex consequences. We are, effectively, conducting a global experiment on the only planet we have. The interconnections with weather patterns, sea-level, and more are real.

“And while there remains uncertainty about the ultimate consequences, there is a good and growing body of research that is pretty scary, and pretty much no evidence that the possible impacts will be good, unless you are a global shipping company hoping to save some money by opening up routes in the Arctic or an oil/gas company hoping to find new cheap fossil fuels.”

Among the “scary” possibly consequences is that the warming Arctic is altering weather systems for much of the northern hemisphere – and not in a good way.

“Changes in ice extent and volume may all be reflected in weather patterns in mid-latitudes. In 2015, a phenomenon called the polar vortex and unusual patterns of jet stream flow brought record-breaking hot and cold weather to different parts of the US,” Dr Gleick wrote.

“Massive storms, sometimes called ‘bomb cyclones’, are created when warm air from the Atlantic and cold air from the Arctic combine. Just this season, massive flooding associated with one of these storms struck the United Kingdom producing record rainfall.

“There may be connections between out-of-season strong tornados in the central US and these new storm patterns. The central US was hit by unusual numbers of tornados in December 2015 causing billions in damage and many deaths.

“Part of the science on this suggests that as the Arctic warms faster, the difference in temperature between the mid-latitudes and the Arctic region decreases. This, in turn, affects storm tracks and the location and strength of the jet stream.”

The reduced amount of white ice also means less energy from the Sun is reflected back into space. Water, which is darker than ice, absorbs more energy and increases the rate of warming.

Dr Gleick said one of the reasons he was interested in Arctic sea ice was the ongoing drought in California.

“We've had four years of severe drought and hoped that the current El Nino [weather system], the strongest on record, would bring relief in the form of strong precipitation,” he wrote.

“It hasn't so far, and there are only about six to eight more weeks in our rainy season. One reason appears to be that storm tracks have gone far to the north because, possibly, of these very changes in the Arctic and atmospheric circulation patterns.

“I'm afraid we're in for a fifth year of drought.”

[tapitsbo]

So how is the geoengineering working out so far for "us"?