Climate Letter #1642

Posted on March 25, 2020 by Carl Campbell
A new appraisal of methane emissions from coal mining is worrisome (Carbon Brief).  The study found that emissions are likely to be running more than double previous estimates, and even higher than amounts attributed to leakage caused by oil and gas production.  The researchers found a way to estimate seepage from old mining sites all over the world, something that has largely been ignored in the past.  This accounted for most of the overall gain.  Since it is very difficult to stop or control this kind of seepage, “emissions from abandoned sites will likely continue growing or at least stay constant, even if dramatic climate action is taken.”  (Early in the industrial era, when coal was the main source of energy from fossil fuel, the growth of methane in the atmosphere far outpaced that of CO2.  You can easily check the numbers out by using the widget I gave you in the letter of two days ago.)

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The UK’s leading environmental activist, George Monbiot, has a reminder that the globe is facing a number of crises that deserve as much attention and action as the coronavirus (The Guardian).  His article includes references to a number of specific pieces of information that are of interest and have either not been widely reported or may have been forgotten, and there are links to all of them.  Here is one that many seem to already have forgotten:  “Yet, even if every nation keeps its promises under the Paris agreement, which currently seems unlikely, global heating will amount to between 3C and 4C.”  That observation can be matched up with another that we have yet to hear much about:  “In his forthcoming book, Our Final Warning, Mark Lynas explains what is likely to happen to our food supply with every extra degree of global heating. He finds that extreme danger kicks in somewhere between 3C and 4C above pre-industrial levels. At this point, a series of interlocking impacts threatens to send food production into a death spiral.”
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David Attenborough probably understands the natural world better than anyone else alive.  New Scientist magazine caught up with him and got his latest thinking on the messes we have been making.  From a brief review of a new film about his life, now being delayed because of the virus:  “In the 1930s, 66 per cent of the world was wilderness and the CO2 levels in the atmosphere were around 310 parts per million, says the film.  By the time he started recording The Blue Planet in 1997, wilderness was down to 47 per cent and CO2 was at 363ppm. Now, of course, the numbers are much worse: wilderness covers just 23 per cent of the planet, and atmospheric CO2 is at more than 410ppm.”  His response to an interviewer:  “I’ve got no idea if humanity is going to get through this or not.”
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New findings about the various ways that plants and animals seek to adapt to changes in their preferred temperature (University of Arizona).  For one thing the two major groups have remarkably similar tendencies on a broad scale.  A number of interesting situational variations are reviewed.  One of the more troubling with respect to today’s world: “The authors also found that in both plants and animals, species seem to have more difficulty adapting rapidly to hotter temperatures and drier conditions than to cooler and wetter conditions. Therefore, both plants and animals may have a particularly difficult time adapting to increasing temperatures and droughts related to global warming.”
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How Canadians are investigating prospects for increased food production in the wake of climate change (Reuters).  The possibilities in Canada are similar to those in Russia, for both in part because of vast areas where permafrost is melting.  “For Canada, that means a potential quadrupling of agricultural land.”   A number of possibilities are described, along with questions and potential problems.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1641

Posted on March 24, 2020 by Carl Campbell
A massive glacier in East Antarctica is now in the spotlight as it rapidly retreats (Yale e360).  “If the glacier were to melt completely, it holds enough water to raise global sea levels by about 5 feet…..the shape of the ground under the ice makes it very susceptible to rapid climate-driven collapse. Not only would this raise sea levels globally, the unblocked canyon could also serve as a pathway for ocean water to penetrate inland and further melt ice sheets…..new research has shown that East Antarctica, which holds much more ice than the west and therefore poses a greater threat to global sea levels, is not as stable as once thought.”

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–The press release issued by University of California, Irvine has additional details:
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Does “carbon capture and storage,” installed at coal-burning power plants, really have a future? (University of Queensland).  It would greatly help to hold down carbon emissions over the remaining life of any such plant, and the state of Queensland , Australia, is one place where the concept is a truly viable option, as reported in this study.  The study also looks at all the practical steps that need to be taken, and the time involved, compared with the limited lifetime of the plants needing treatment: “It’s conceivable that commercial scale, meaning of a scale which creates deep emissions cuts, capture and storage could commence around 2030, but we’d need to start the process now.”  (Nothing was said about financing, leading one to suspect that difficulties might be encountered in that part of the process.)
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The Great Barrier Reef is again being bleached by warm ocean waters, this time at a pace never seen before (New York Daily News).   “This is the third major bleaching event to happen in the past four years, after a 14-year gap between bleachings in 2002 and 2016. The bleaching turns the corals a pale shade of white and makes them more susceptible to disease, and at the rate it’s currently happening, they don’t have enough time to recover and grow back before the next round. The last two bleaching events, combined, killed nearly half of the reef’s corals.  Experts are worried about the widespread nature of this year’s bleaching, and they’re alarmed at how much more easily these events happen than they used to, as climate change warms the planet’s oceans.”
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The warming of oceans is also resulting in losses of vast stretches of kelp forests (The Salt Lake Tribune).  It’s called a “zombie apocalypse,” in the form of an explosion of purple sea urchins, and its scope is staggering.  “Northern California has lost an estimated 90 percent of its kelp forests along a 200-mile stretch of coastline…..It’s a story told round the globe in one form or another, from Norway to Nova Scotia, Australia to the Aleutians. Once-lush beds of massive kelp, up to 100 feet tall and teeming with wildlife, have been replaced by stony “barrens” overrun by urchins and not much else.”  Kelp forests store carbon in the same manner as do forests on land, and their loss translates into a similar effect on Earth’s climate as ocean’s reduce their take-up of CO2 from the atmosphere.
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“Coronavirus Holds Key Lessons on How to Fight Climate Change” (Yale e360).  “When the COVID-19 pandemic is past, societies may adopt some important measures that would lower emissions, from more teleconferencing to shortening global supply chains. But the most lasting lesson may be what the coronavirus teaches us about the urgency of taking swift action…..If you wait until you can see the impact, it is too late to stop it…..COVID-19 is climate on warp speed…..Everything with climate is decades; here it’s days. Climate is centuries; here it’s weeks.”  An excellent article that makes good points throughout.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1640

Posted on March 23, 2020 by Carl Campbell
A summary of how scientific understanding of the effect of permafrost thawing on the climate has grown (Mongabay).  This excellent article tells how thinking on this subject has changed in recent years as new evidence pours in.  It includes comments from scientists involved in recent studies.  The growth rate of carbon being released to the atmosphere has been underestimated, and now it has the potential to shift gears and rise even more sharply from here on.
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An update on the growing threat posed by locust swarms, and new information about the important role of climate change (Inside Climate News, by Bob Berwyn).  “Locust outbreaks could be driven by changes in plant nutrients caused by extreme weather, like more frequent soggy tropical storms, which make plants grow faster but dilute elements like nitrogen…..Locusts have a weird physiology—they like low nitrogen plants…..recent research shows that human-driven warming may be intensifying a regional Indian Ocean pattern of warming and cooling that could exacerbate extremes like tropical storms, heavy rains and heat waves—all factors that can affect locust populations…..Scientists warn they could spread across hundreds of thousands more square miles from Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia to Sudan, and across the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea into Iran, Pakistan and India. Such a spread would threaten the food supplies of 20 million people.“
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Three different ways that changes in vegetation cause changes in regional air temperature (Climate News Network).  Tim Radford wrote this interesting summary comparing the findings of three widely separated studies.  One key point is that changing vegetation is by itself capable of significantly affecting temperatures, but the underlying circumstances are also important.
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What are the chances that hydrogen will replace natural gas for heating homes? (The Guardian).  There is a viable prospect of this happening, and much enthusiasm, but also considerable skepticism such that the likelihood is far from clear.  Potential competition from heat pumps, also attractive, is one consideration that is looked at.  This article offers a good review covering all sides of the possible outcome to a much-needed changeover.
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A handy widget is available that makes many kinds of helpful climate information readily available, and always up to date (2 Degrees Institute).  There is access at this link just below the top image.  You will need to spend some time getting familiar with the icons and the nifty way everything works, all of which will leave you amazed. 
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Why South Korea is controlling the coronavirus so much better than any other country (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).  This is off the subject of climate, but I think everyone will be interested just the same.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1639

Posted on March 20, 2020 by Carl Campbell
A staggering number of internally displaced people have little defense against the coronavirus (IDMC – Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre).  Globally, there are 40+ million persons who have been forced to leave their homes because of violence or natural disaster, and who are still remaining in their own country but with precarious living conditions.  Many are especially vulnerable because they live “in crowded conditions and without access to water and sanitation, healthcare and government support…..simply cannot ‘self-isolate’, enjoy the levels of water and sanitation, and respond to illness in the way that billions in their own homes can.”   (This organization is one of the few that seeks to offer help to such almost-forgotten persons.)

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Overly ambitious human demands for natural resources are linked to the growth in numbers of infectious diseases (The Guardian).  The author of this extensive review has interviewed many of the scientists who pay attention to these phenomena.  A common theme:  “Humans…are creating the conditions for the spread of diseases by reducing the natural barriers between host animals – in which the virus is naturally circulating – and themselves…..I am not at all surprised about the coronavirus outbreak—The majority of pathogens are still to be discovered. We are at the very tip of the iceberg.”  They also prescribe recommendations for remediation.
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Scientists believe the circumstances leading up to the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s could be replicated because of climate change (Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems).  “The Dust Bowl was centered on the Great Plains of the USA, where decades of unsustainable deep plowing had displaced native, moisture-retaining grasses. An atypical La Niña then brought intense droughts, high temperatures, and strong winds which blew away the topsoil in the form of large-scale dust storms…..a catastrophic effect on crops where wheat and maize production in the USA plummeted by 36% and 48% during the 1930s…..But due to climate change, massive crop failures are more likely to happen again in the future…..in another three to four decades that most of the USA will have further warmed by 1.5-2 °C.”  This IPCC prediction gave rise to a new study about how global food supplies would be harmfully amplified by an event of similar magnitude:
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One kind of geoengineering, done properly, is probably safe enough to try (University College London).  “Stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is the idea that adding a layer of aerosol particles to the upper atmosphere can reduce climate changes caused by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.  Previous research shows that solar geoengineering could be achieved using commercially available aircraft technologies to deliver the particles at a cost of a few billion dollars per year and would reduce global average temperatures.”  Questions have been raised about the possibility of unsafe side effects, which have now apparently been given a satisfactory answer.  It all depends on the dosage, which must be kept low enough.  (I think we’ll see it happen, in just a very few years.)
Carl

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Climate Letter #1638

Posted on March 19, 2020 by Carl Campbell
The effect of heat stress on the survival of various organisms is becoming evident (Yale e360).  Veteran journalist Jim Robbins gets down to specifics with this excellent review of the findings of a number of recent studies.  Heat stress is brought about by the occurrence of extreme high temperatures, which are growing more common in all sorts of places.  As one researcher put it, “Do extremes matter? You better believe they do, and it’s scary and getting scarier.”

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Relative to the above, a new study has found that scientists often badly underestimate future occurrences of extreme weather events (Stanford University).  “Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh found that predictions that relied only on historical observations underestimated by about half the actual number of extremely hot days in Europe and East Asia, and the number of extremely wet days in the U.S., Europe and East Asia…..even small increases in global warming can cause large upticks in the probability of extreme weather events, particularly heat waves and heavy rainfall….causing significant impacts on people and ecosystems….. a warming world has made many extreme weather events more frequent, intense and widespread, a trend that is likely to intensify.”  Noah Diffenbaugh can explain all this better than anyone.  It is a very serious matter.
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“Decarbonizing cities to meet EU goals is a question of money” (POLITICO).  “Cities generate about 70 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, so any effort to become carbon-neutral fails without their involvement. But the costs of going green are immense…..Globally, cities need to invest $1.8 trillion a year to become carbon-neutral.”  This story is mostly about particulars related to buildings in Warsaw, but the observations are applicable everywhere, and the challenge is obviously great.  “About two-thirds of Europe’s building stock dates to before 1980, which means it doesn’t meet modern energy standards and has to be upgraded.”  Being there are other demands for the same money, it won’t be easy.
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No new cases of coronavirus reported in Wuhan, China and the surrounding province (Axios).  “Chinese authorities introduced unprecedented measures in January in an effort to contain the virus, including suspending all travel in and out of all cities in Hubei province and preventing the province’s 59 million people from leaving home.”  This great news was accomplished by actually taking some of the most radical steps that can be imagined for completely transforming the behavior of so many people, and it worked.  There is now a known, effective means of stopping all spreading of the disease, so that people can safely start to associate again in a normal way, but only as long as they have borders that can prevent anyone from entering their home territory without proof of being equally clean.  That restriction might need to go on for years, serving as a hindrance to travel and trade.  Could a whole nation as big and active as the US, having a much different style of governance, and no internal sets of borders that can be sealed individually, accomplish the same level of conditions?  Not as quickly and efficiently as Wuhan and its province, but we will have to work at it, and the situation should offer opportunities for more effective climate action at the same time.  (See the following story.)
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“Green Jobs Are the Answer to the Coronavirus Recession” (The New Republic).  This is nothing more than a reestablishment of Franklyn Roosevelt’s New Deal and all its public works, except now it’s Greener.  The author of this piece, with an assist from The New York Times, has a clear message, and politicians need to keep hearing it from nearly everyone, if that’s possible.  Whatever stimulus program is finally adopted should certainly not be aimed at just putting things back the way they were; here we see some great ideas for an alternative program.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1637

Posted on March 18, 2020 by Carl Campbell
Soil restoration provides an important opportunity to remove carbon from the atmosphere (Phys.org)  “Restoring and protecting the world’s soil could absorb more than five billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year—roughly what the US emits annually—new research showed Monday…..Most of this potential, around 40 percent, can be achieved simply by leaving existing soil alone—that is, not continuing to expand agriculture and plantation growth across the globe…..soil restoration would have significant co-benefits for humanity, including improved water quality,  food production and crop resilience.”  In every country, government assistance would be of great help in getting this done, and clearly needs to be stepped up.

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Coronavirus studies help to demonstrate the key role of air pollution as a cause of premature death (The Guardian).  There is a great deal of irony involved in this story, in part because air pollution by itself, in the absence of any contagious disease, is known to cause at least 8 million early deaths globally every year, and no one gets very excited by that number.  Several past studies are noted  in this article:  “There is evidence from previous coronavirus outbreaks that those exposed to dirty air are more at risk of dying.”  The current outbreak, meanwhile, is having an unusual effect on societies everywhere that is resulting in greatly reduced amounts of air pollution, leading to this observation:  “It seems clearly incorrect and foolhardy to conclude that pandemics are good for health…..But the calculation is perhaps a useful reminder of the often-hidden health consequences of the status quo, ie, the substantial costs that our current way of doing things exacts on our health and livelihoods.”
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Researchers now believe sea-ice loss at both poles causes significant warming of tropical ocean waters, further affecting the pace of climate change globally (University of California – San Diego).  “They found that Antarctic sea ice loss combines with Arctic sea ice loss to create unusual wind patterns in the Pacific Ocean that will suppress the upward movement of deep cold ocean water. This will trigger surface ocean warming, especially in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. Warming there is a well-known hallmark of the El Niño climate pattern that often brings intense rains to North and South America and droughts to Australia and other western Pacific countries.”
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Samsung says it has developed a car battery with a range of 500 miles on one charge (OilPrice).  “One of the latest entrants in the heated race for higher-performance battery pack technology is a new type of solid-state battery with high energy density, half the size of a typical lithium-ion battery, and the potential to make the 500-mile range possible.”  It is also said to be safer and more durable than existing lithium/ion batteries.  https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/New-Solid-State-Battery-Tech-Promises-500-Mile-Range-EV.html
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A new study is full of facts about the disparity in energy footprints (University of Leeds).  Transportation leads the way, as can be noticed wherever there is a rise in income and wealth.  “Indeed, the researchers found that 187 times more vehicle fuel energy is used by the top 10% consumers relative to the bottom 10%.”  Eighty-six different countries were studied.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1636

Posted on March 17, 2020 by Carl Campbell
Some more thoughts related to the new Eocene study, where one thing in particular stands out.  First, remember that this is the work of  climate scientists who specialize in Earth Systems, part of a minority group having a distinctive viewpoint toward future events.  All but one of the authors are closely associated at the University of Utrecht, and affiliated with the Netherlands Earth System Science Centre.  The lead author is a new PhD, while the others are veterans having plenty of publications on record. One of these, Henk A. Djikstra, principal mentor of the lead author, is himself the author of four textbooks and hundreds of publications that have been cited over 9000 times.  One can feel comfortable about the quality of this work, and should  have no hesitation toward taking its content seriously.  That would include every climate scientist who is not up-to-date on how coming changes in the Earth system are likely to revise everything they have been taught in the more traditional curricula.
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What stands out is something I mentioned in yesterday’s letter, the information about changes in geography, or orography as some would call it, that are expected to accompany the melting of the great ice sheets.  This is a one-time thing, and, while it could have happened before, the only such event in all of Earth’s history that we are able to closely inspect—in reverse mode, with a modicum of confidence—is the event that starts in the late Eocene.  What we are seeing is that the global air temperature changes that go hand-in-hand with this degree of melting are not only of high magnitude, but heavily weighted by an unusual and unexpectedly powerful source.  As predicted by current workers in the specialty of Earth Science, and not just those in the Netherlands, the strength of this source, if allowed to run its full course, is equal to twice the amount of warming foreseen from a single double of the two major greenhouse gases plus their usual feedbacks.  That means about 6.3C versus 3.2C for a 9.5C total.
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What this report is therefore telling us is that a single double of those two gases, in combination with the naturally-added input of the unique secondary feedback from geography-related effects, is all that is required to create enough warming to fully take down the ice sheets if given enough time.  While all of the timing factors are not well-known (they are much in need of future study) that simple fact, or conception if you will, by itself is scary.  As we all know, one of the two gases (methane) has already more than doubled, and the second, which is past the half-way mark, is advancing on a pace that could reach a complete double well within the current century.  That second one, carbon dioxide, while the stronger of the two, is also known to be the more difficult to remove from the air once it is in place.
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What is it that we want to know about the timing?  The first thing that comes to mind is about when to expect the extra six degrees of warming, meaning those related to geography, to start kicking in, now that the melting has begun?  The introduction should be very slow to begin with, probably not at all in this century, and there should not really be a strong acceleration until entering the final stages of collapse.  But even a little bit of added warming along the way will give the process an extra push with some degree of quickening, and likely add to what we actually feel.  Then how far off in the future should we be looking for the middle and later stages of acceleration, where we end up with all of the 9.5C of projected warming and all of the 240 feet of sea level approaching in concert?  Science must not shy away from finding the answers.  Scientists will somehow need to learn how to integrate the extra warming amplification with the rate of melting progress we otherwise attribute just to greenhouse gases.
Carl
 

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Climate Letter #1635

Posted on March 16, 2020 by Carl Campbell
More about the Eocene study discussed in Friday’s letter.  I went ahead and dug into the full report as much as I could over the weekend and came away with some revisions and additions to my original comments.  This is all worth doing because the information in the report is actually quite sensational once you see it in a full perspective.  The authors made no attempt to make it sound sensational, nor were they aiming for any kind of publicity.  They come across simply as a group of Earth System scientists doing everyday communication with their colleagues about why a particular new model describing the late Eocene climate was superior to older models in a number of ways.  They know it is not a subject the public cares deeply about, nor does the public need to at this point.  Or should we?  Here is my new set of impressions:

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1.  If today we achieve a doubling of both CO2 and methane from their pre-industrial levels (280 ppm and 671 ppb), accompanied by other well-known adjustments and feedbacks, and are unable to bring them back down again for an extended period of time, the level of radiative forcing that results will be high enough to create a situation where eventually both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets would no longer exist.  That was the situation at the very end of the Eocene, but with the climate then trending cooler, and having reached a point just before the Antarctic ice sheet was able to form.  We have already raised CO2 to 414 ppm, which is logarithmically more than half way to a double, and methane to 1866 ppb, where it has doubled once and gone more than half-way to a second double.  They are both moving, much faster than we like.
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2.  Just doubling those two gases would, according to the study, be enough to raise global surface air temperatures by an average of 3.2C with only a small delay.  This figure is right in line with what we hear from scientists every day, apart from those troublesome new estimates that go to 4C or more, and that by itself is good news if it holds.  That much heating would in fact not do away completely with the big ice sheets but would start the ball rolling, the early stages of which we have already seen happening.  Some further assistance in the warming process would be required to wipe out all the ice, and that is where Earth System scientists quietly come into the picture.  They have stories to tell about how the surface of the earth, the atmosphere and oceans would all experience changes that on balance add more warming to air temperatures.  A lot more, it seems.
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3.  On Friday I remarked about how the study Abstract spoke of average global temperature increases of 5 to 7 degrees C over pre-industrial figures at the end of the Eocene, but I had it wrong.  That was the increase attributed to just the Earth System changes that were generated in advanced stages along the way, in addition to the 3.2C added through changes of the radiation sort, for a total increase of 9.5C or more when the ice sheets are absent.  Most of that extra boost is attributed to geographical changes that result from all the meltwater that, while being produced, is able to add 240 feet or so to global sea level along the way.  Land surface area is thereby considerably reduced and so is the average elevation of land surfaces.  There are numerous albedo changes that favor warmth, including a total lack of any ice and snow effects, and several more.  (Many of the relevant details are attributed to the findings of other Eocene studies that are only referenced in this one, and are not especially new or controversial.)
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4.  Some of the overall effect is the result of the global surface itself warming much more evenly than before from the equator to the poles.  That would result in many differences in patterns of air pressure, wind speed, wind direction, jet stream movement and strength and so on.  I think it would also reduce the ability of water vapor to have the same strong greenhouse effect as it does today, for lack of the leverage it now has to bring a great amount of warming to regions that are very cold, if and when those regions should no longer exist.  (Water vapor increases cannot add much warming to regions that are already very warm because the needed amounts are great, and if produced they get rained out so easily.)  This could explain why the model found that doubling the major greenhouse gases during the “hothouse” era should have less immediate warming impact than they do today, simply because water vapor, the big feedback partner whose effects are customarily accounted for in combination with those of the CO2 forcing, would effectively become a weaker partner.
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5.  The study does not tell us how long it could take to melt down the great ice sheets if we now complete the CO2 double.  It would not be millions of years.  Would it even be 1000?  We need to get an answer.  We also need to keep a close eye of methane, which is way ahead of the game, and getting no accounting credit for any of the large current water vapor feedback, as properly deserved.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1634

Posted on March 13, 2020 by Carl Campbell
With all the news now being dominated by the coronavirus, this will be a good day to talk about something else, and the farther away the better.  How about the Eocene period, which lasted from 56 to 34 million years ago?  It is one of the most interesting eras because it began with some of the hottest temperatures in history and ended with a very rapid cooling episode that caused the Antarctic ice sheet to emerge.  Scientists are keenly interested in the latter segment for the simple reason that everything we can learn about it should be helpful toward bettering our understanding of the way climate change progresses and what kind of future climate we may be heading into. The more recent Pliocene period, which offers an even better model with more certain matches, has so far gotten most of that kind of attention.  The late part of the Eocene, in reversal, represents a potentially next next big step leading in the direction of a true “hothouse” state of climate for our planet.  You can start by checking out a picture of the Eocene in its entirety from Wikipedia at this link:

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A new study has come to my attention which has not yet been published in its accepting journal (Climate of the Past) but has been made available online for discussion purposes.  It appears to be a high-quality work, offering a representation of the most up-to-date evidence, modelling and interpretation of the last 8 million years of the Eocene, divided into two halves separated by the exceptionally sharp break that led to a major cooling of the climate.  That break can be studied as an example of our own immediate period but operating in reverse.  In fact scientists have already learned quite a bit about how things changed and what caused the changes.  You can read the Abstract of the study at this link—  https://www.clim-past-discuss.net/cp-2020-29/  and then I will give you my own idea of what was most interesting about its content.
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1.  The best estimates for CO2 concentration are around highs of 1200 ppm for the 4 million years prior to the break and lows near 500 ppm for the 4 million years that came after.  The average temperature for the entire period is estimated at 5 to 7C above pre-industrial, or 4 to 6C higher than today, and would be more than that at the highest end.
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2.  The absence of ice sheets and differences in geographical elevation meant that polar regions, while much warmer than today, were relatively not as much different in warmth compared with lower latitudes as they are today.  In other words they did much more of the cooling at that time, just as today they are doing a larger part of the warming, at least, so far, in the Arctic.
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3.  The combination of heavier clouds and more water vapor, which are classified as feedbacks rather than forcings, had a relatively stronger effect on temperature than forcings at that time, as compared with the situation today.  On balance they had a tendency to hold back the gains when temperatures were the warmest during the Eocene, thereafter tending more toward resisting the strength of the cooling period, when a reduction in greenhouse gases was taking center stage.  That could be an advantage for us in the years ahead.
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4.  Overall, the rate of climate sensitivity is taken to be a bit more than 3.0C for each doubling of both CO2 and methane concentrations, which is not much different from the common estimates that are used today.  We will not reach a CO2 double until we hit 560 ppm, which leaves some breathing room over our current 413 parts.  With methane the story is different, because here we have already doubled the concentration since 1750 and are well on the way to a second double.  I believe methane, all by itself, or with no feedbacks counted, adds about half as much as CO2 to global temperatures per doubling when CO2 is also treated in isolation and not beefed up with feedbacks like it usually is.  That means it has contributed more than CO2 to today’s temperature increases since 1750.  (See CL #1618, Feb. 20, for more on that subject.)
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If you really feel ambitious, and want to avoid crowds this weekend, the new discussion paper on the Eocene climate transition is fully available at  https://www.clim-past-discuss.net/cp-2020-29/
Carl

Posted in Daily Climate Letters | Comments Off on Climate Letter #1634

Climate Letter #1633

Posted on March 12, 2020 by Carl Campbell
A global temperature update for February 2020 from James Hansen (Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions).   The month was only slightly behind the all-time February record set in 2016.  What is most interesting about this post is the description of the strong contrast in the warming trends of the northern and southern hemispheres between 1970 and 2020.  The full explanation was provided in a major study published in 2016 that attracted much publicity at the time.  There is a link to the study, which has open access and is a very interesting read, and a quick summary in the longer paragraph.  Also, take a good look at the map in the lower right corner.

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Coronavirus ‘Really Not the Way You Want to Decrease Emissions’ (Inside Climate News).  This post is full of thoughts and ideas about the relationship between two major crises we are facing and the various ways humans have responded to each.  “As the global economy shudders in reaction to the coronavirus, lessons are emerging about what that response can—and cannot—tell us about fighting climate change.”  There is a chart near the end which shows how past recessions, including the Great Recession of 2008, did nothing to slow the basic rate of growth in emissions.  The new disease, which does not appear to be quite as serious as some of the worst diseases in history—think smallpox for one, does seem to have unique powers for causing responses in the form of shutdowns of economic activity, precisely the kinds of activity that produce carbon emissions.  If this grows and endures it is not difficult to imagine economic consequences eventually going well beyond those of the Great Recession, maybe even as far as a full collapse.  That is what many people seem to be fearing more than the disease itself, thereby generating urgent calls for more stimulus, etc.  Many scientists believe we should have curbed CO2 growth at about 350 ppm, and that letting it keep rising to where we are today, with more on the way, is nothing but a recipe for disaster.  The virus may not be one’s favorite choice as a means to stop the bleeding at this late point in the game, but what if it is the only one that works?
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From The Guardian, a rundown of many of the recent and quite dramatic declines in economic activity around the world which can be blamed directly on the virus.  There are no predictions about how much farther this can go.  “Analysts say it is too early to know if coronavirus will push global CO2 emissions onto the downward path that is needed if the world is to have any hope of keeping global heating to a relatively safe level of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. That depends on how far the outbreak spreads, and whether the economic effects are prolonged……But even a slowdown would gain time for action – advances in technology, lower renewables prices and more public pressure on governments to change tack. The response to the coronavirus could also demonstrate that radical steps can work.”
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Climate change might have played a role in the emergence of COVID-19 (Inside Climate News).  An interview with a public health researcher who has investigated changes in the connection between humans and the animals that are often found to be involved in the spreading of new diseases.  “If you look at the emerging infectious diseases that have moved into people from animals or other sources over the last several decades, the vast majority of those are coming from animals. And the majority of those are coming from wild animals. We have transformed life on Earth. We are having a massive effect on how the relationships between all life on Earth operate and also with ourselves. We shouldn’t be surprised that these emerging diseases pop up.”  He describes many types of changes, with a focus on how environment and climate are involved.
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Bill McKibben is an expert student of climate science who has been spelling out the reasons for holding the CO2 level below 350 for many decades.  He is now writing a wide-ranging newsletter about the climate crisis each week for The New Yorker, free online for anyone who wants to subscribe.  Here is the latest copy:

Posted in Daily Climate Letters | Comments Off on Climate Letter #1633