Climate Letter #1342

A landmark study, published in The Lancet, calls for radical changes in human diet.  Current practices are shown to have catastrophic consequences of many kinds for both the planet and human populations.  “Currently, nearly a billion people are hungry and another two billion are eating too much of the wrong foods, causing epidemics of obesity, heart disease and diabetes…..At the same time the global food system is the single largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the biggest driver of biodiversity loss, and the main cause of deadly algae blooms along coasts and inland waterways…..Agriculture—which has transformed nearly half the planet’s land surface—also uses up about 70 percent of the global fresh water supply.”  Everything that must be changed is spelled out.  https://phys.org/news/2019-01-human-diet-catastrophic-planet.html

Severe deforestation in Brazil is mostly attributed to growing demand for meat and biodiesel fuel (Mongabay).

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The Colorado River is in big trouble because of overusage and unrelenting drought (Yale e360).  This is Part I of a report that should get a high level of attention, as many millions of people are affected.  Among the main consequences of a growing water shortage one can expect cutbacks in agriculture and economic growth in general, giving climate mitigation an inconvenient sort of assist.  Nature has its own way of forcing changes in human behavior that never should have been allowed in the first place.
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In another piece from Mongabay, a strong case is made for the importance of protection and development of forests as a solution to climate change.  Such action is recognized as equal to the need to reduce carbon emissions from the energy sector but badly fails to get the same level of attention and resources.  The authors say that today’s forests hold 1.3 times more carbon than found in the world’s untapped fossil energy sources, now being progressively lost to deforestation.  There is no better way to recapture CO2 from the air than by growing more trees.
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One more piece for today about a major tragedy in the making due to forest destruction, from Yale e360.  New Guinea holds one of the world’s last great rainforests, loaded with biodiversity.  The island is now gaining 2700 miles of new highways in order to open up virgin territory for development.  “As is always the case, the construction of an extensive road system spells the beginning of the end of these wilderness areas as roads open the way for illegal deforestation, poaching, wildfires, and land investors bent on encouraging a building boom.”
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A picture story from Greenland about the workers who retrieve the ice cores that help to reveal Earth’s climate history (The Guardian).
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On the lighter side, these pictures from The Siberian Times show people who ran in a marathon race when temperatures reached a low of -52C, or -62F.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1341

Evidence of extreme vulnerability of insect populations to climate change (The Guardian).  The number of studies assessing this vital issue is not large, “but those that do exist are deeply worrying…..We are essentially destroying the very life support systems that allow us to sustain our existence on the planet, along with all the other life on the planet.  It is just horrifying to watch us decimate the natural world like this.”  Birds and other animals that feed on insects are disappearing along with them.  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/15/insect-collapse-we-are-destroying-our-life-support-systems

A new study describes the impact of ocean acidification on the base of the marine food chain.  The processes involved, which are complicated, cause phytoplankton communities to become unbalanced.  “The stimulated growth and persistence of harmful or nuisance algal species has the capacity to throw marine food webs out of whack by changing the export of organic material to deeper waters and decreasing the amount of available zooplankton that many fish and higher level marine predators rely on for nutrition.”  Over half of the world’s human population depends on this same food chain for a good part of its nutritional needs.

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Permafrost soils are warming up globally at about the same pace as air temperatures.  Systematic, comprehensive testing at depth for a full decade over a wide range of locations has produced useful data results.  Soils farthest to the north, which contain the largest amount of carbon, are warming the fastest on average—in Siberia, nearly 1C for the decade.  Variations in snow cover were found to have a marked effect on results.
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Some scientists believe it is still possible to limit the global temperature increase to the 1.5C target set in Paris.  This post has a short introduction to their work by Yale e360, including a link to the full study with open access.  This is probably the best possible statement of a viewpoint that many other scientists would approach in a more doubtful way.
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An exciting piece of news from researchers at the University of Alberta.  It is just one step, but that one step is critical, and the ultimate goal is far beyond the dreams of others who work on battery improvements.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1340

A major new study has details of the rising rate of ice loss from Antarctica (Washington Post).  The author of this study, Eric Rignot, is a veteran researcher in this specialty, whose views command the highest level of respect.  There were four decades of observations employed in making the study, happening just in time to catch the very early stages of what is likely to become an event of whoppingly large proportions for perhaps a couple of centuries.

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–Here is a link giving full access to the report.  By all means, give it a good look.  The conclusion ends with this sentence:  “Our mass balance assessment, combined with prior surveys, suggests that the sector between Cook/Ninnis and West ice shelves may be exposed to CDW (circumpolar deep water—which is warm and salty) and could contribute multimeter SLR (sea level rise) with unabated climate warming.”
–The standard press release from the University of California has some additional comments from Rignot, who seems to have no doubt about a future of “multi-meter sea level rise from Antarctica in the coming centuries.”  He has previously used words like “unstoppable” in a similar context.
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Extra comment:  This story ties in very well with the two lead stories in yesterday’s letter and also the big story in Friday’s letter about new evidence of how fast the ocean waters are being warmed.  Here is one more report on the latter with insights from journalist Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stonehttps://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/oceans-temperatures-rising-778581/.  Jeff makes a good point about the connection between that massive creation of warm water and the massive increase in melting from the underside that is affecting the glaciers of Anarctica and the shelves of sea ice that tend to hold them back.  Our climate is not warming as fast as it could be, were there no heat being soaked up by the oceans, but all that collected heat has now begun making its presence known to us by another means, via the ice melt and sea level route.
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One more thing, with regard to the report that the oceans are absorbing 40% more heat than previously recognized, I have been wondering how to put that finding into a full and proper context, not just letting it hang out as a kind of loose end. It has finally dawned on me that this provides a satisfactory answer to questions about the true level of Earth’s energy imbalance, which has customarily been estimated within a range of about 0.6 to 0.9 watts per square meter, sometimes a bit more or a bit less. The imbalance pertains to incoming absorption of about 240 watts per sqm from the sun, which is a fairly steady amount, while outgoing is being steadily reduced by a small amount due mainly to the addition of greenhouse gases. The imbalance is picked up as an accumulation of heat being stored on or near Earth’s surface plus some that causes a net melting of ice. We have already figured out that 93% of the total is currently being stored in the oceans, leaving just 7% divided between land or air storage and ice melting. Those proportions are best left unchanged, but we can readily narrow down the amount of imbalance, after adding 40% to ocean heat storage, just by moving any estimate as low as 0.6 watt per square meter up to, in this case, 0.84. The higher number is actually more in line with what climate models have been suggesting but could not support by the old-fashioned ways of making direct measurements.
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Finally, the level of imbalance was around zero 300 years ago. Its rise reflects the incredibly rapid rise in greenhouse gas. It should now be peaking, as the rate of the gas rise begins slowing. Oceans will continue to gather heat until the imbalance has eventually disappeared, but more and more of its heat will be applied to melting larger and larger blocks of ice for quite some time. As for air storage, more ice melting should have a beneficial cooling effect for awhile, transmitted through ocean cooling, while it lasts.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1339

East Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf is found to be at risk of melting.  The Ross is the largest of all shelves, buttressing glaciers that hold enough ice to raise sea level by 38 feet in the event of complete collapse.  According to one of the researchers, “My primary concerns would be that the potential for melting and collapse of the big ice shelves is not being taken seriously enough…..They’re being treated as less important because they are not presently showing much signs of change. But on a 100-year timescale, they have the potential for large changes.”

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A new report looks at the history of Antarctica’s ice sheet from 34 million years ago.  There have always been significant effects generated by astronomical motions that shift the intensity of solar radiation back and forth from one pole toward the other.  Of particular interest was a period in the mid-Miocene, some 14 million years ago, when there was a concurrence of high atmospheric CO2 and peak radiation at the South Pole.  There is evidence that sea ice completely disappeared, allowing vast amounts of glacial ice to be taken down from the continental surface.  Global temperatures, on average, were three or four degrees C warmer than those of today.
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How intensified land use has transformed the planet over the last three centuries.  A highly detailed new study has found startling changes that go hand in hand with the changes wrought by CO2 emissions.  “Three centuries ago, humans were intensely using just around 5 percent of the planet, with nearly half the world’s land effectively wild. Today, more than half of Earth’s land is occupied by agriculture or human settlements.”  The natural ecology that evolved over eons of time is rapidly disappearing.  The story has comments about future possibilities that emerge from the study.
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China is set to become the world’s renewable energy superpower (Forbes).  A new report foresees profound consequences in the geopolitical world.  Nations like the US that have fallen behind may suddenly need to rethink their priorities for purely economic reasons.  For example, boosting markets for renewable products at home would be of great benefit for the domestic producers who are being overshadowed by the Chinese.
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A report on Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves.  There has been an independent analysis proving a total of 263 billion barrels available for production, which leads the world.  It is also the world’s cheapest to produce, but the Saudis have been in no hurry to do so at full speed like some other countries.  Their production of about four billion barrels per year compares with the world total of 30 billion (which is now a record high).  If climate targets are to be met that number would need to be drastically reduced over the next thirty years.  There is no need for any company or nation to waste money on further exploration for new reserves. or so it seems.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1338

There is an important new story in the news today, based on a short article written for the journal Science by four scientists who have pulled together all of the best available information about how the oceans have been warming over the years in association with the rise in greenhouse gases.  They draw a number of conclusions that in turn have an assortment of  implications, all of which are of serious interest.  I am going to give you four different stories about the article, each of which has a bit of difference in emphasis on how to put this information into perspective, plus the article itself.  It should all be read, and then I’ll mop up with some personal commentary.

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From Inside Climate News, we first learn that the study “strengthens the consensus that the warming of the world’s oceans is accelerating.  It’s a trend that climate models have long predicted, but it had been difficult to confirm until recently.  The findings are vindication of the scientific community’s work so far and lend greater weight to the projections for warming through the end of this century.”  This has been underestimated by IPCC reports.  Then, “Ocean temperatures are also much less variable than surface temperatures, which can swing greatly from year to year, and therefore give a clearer signal of global warming.”  From Kevin Trenberth, “With 2018 the warmest year yet in the oceans, there’s no doubt about what is happening.  It emphasizes the unequivocal fact that the ocean is warming, the planet is warming, and it has consequences.”
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Joe Romm, writing for ThinkProgress, puts extra emphasis on the idea that, since ocean warming is a better indicator of what is happening to Earth in comparison with air temperature warming, that makes 2018 the hottest year on record.  Modern measurements of ocean heat content have become so accurate that the whole idea of a “hiatus” in the warming trend in recent years is practically eliminated.  The oceans, at depth, are not bothered by all sorts of temporary disruptions on the surface the way air temperatures are.
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From Carbon Brief we get more insight into the background of how the story developed.  One of the four authors, Zeke Hausfather, is a frequent contributor to this website.  For scientists, an important conclusion is that the models they are using to make future predictions have now been shown to be trustworthy when tested against proven results that happened in the past.  Those results have not previously been clear with respect to ocean heat content (OHC) because it is so difficult to measure.
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Here is the standard news release from U of Cal Berkeley, as published by Phys.org, emphasizing the fact that previous data reluctantly accepted for making historical physical measurements of ocean heat content were too low.
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I like the idea of having a completely separate definition for global warming and climate change.  The “globe” in this case is almost completely represented by ocean water, which is about two miles deep on average, accumulates heat in a slow and steady way and then firmly holds onto it for many thousands of years.  The ocean surfaces, which can be thought of as only a few inches deep at any one time, have a totally different pattern of gaining, losing and holding heat, with the same kind of shorter-term rhythms experienced by surfaces on land and the lowest portions of the atmosphere.  Surface heat of all three types grows slowly, but not nearly as steadily as the full heat of the deep oceans.  Air temperatures over the oceans, 70% of climate air, will keep warming as long as ocean surfaces are warming, and ocean surfaces will keep warming until they can no longer pass part of their daily collection of heat into the depths below them, which will continue for at least another one or two hundred years even if the greenhouse gas above stops growing.  Conditions governing the interaction of climate air and land surfaces don’t work that way because there are practically no depths below the land surfaces capable of stealing collected heat.  One more point, I am not convinced by looking at the charts that ocean heat content has “accelerated” during the past couple of decades.  That part of the uptrend has a more linear type of look than it did before.
Carl

Posted in Daily Climate Letters | Comments Off on Climate Letter #1338

Climate Letter #1337

Today, a change of pace.  There just isn’t much fresh material these days of the kind I like to pick stories from, which are preferably short and to the point with possibly wide interest.  Following are some longer things I have hung onto for awhile that may be of special interest for willing readers:

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“When the ice melts: the catastrophe of vanishing glaciers” (The Guardian).   This is an edited extract from a new book entitled The End of Ice by Dahr Jamail. 
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“When Whales and Humans Talk,” by Krista Langlois.  This article published by Hakai Magazine is also available as a podcast.
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An explanation of the “Green New Deal,” by David Roberts (VOX).  What the term means has not yet been completely figured out, but we are sure to hear much more about it.
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A preview of the risks we are taking from emerging feedbacks and tipping points in a warming world.  This link is to the full study of a report published last August, reviewed at that time in Climate Letters on August 7 and 8.  It was written in non-technical language for general readership by a group of distinguished Earth System scientists.  From their Conclusions:  “Our analysis suggests that the Earth System may be approaching a planetary threshold that could lock in a continuing rapid pathway toward much hotter conditions—Hothouse Earth. This pathway would be propelled by strong, intrinsic, biogeophysical feedbacks difficult to influence by human actions, a pathway that could not be reversed, steered, or substantially slowed.  Where such a threshold might be is uncertain, but it could be only decades ahead at a temperature rise of ∼2.0 °C above preindustrial, and thus, it could be within the range of the Paris Accord temperature targets.  The impacts of a Hothouse Earth pathway on human societies would likely be massive, sometimes abrupt, and undoubtedly disruptive.”  This is the clearest and most rational statement you will ever see about why there is such an urgent need to lower the risk by taking actions that may seem extreme.
–A separate but closely related study, published in December, has taken a look at six climate states from the past that we can choose from for possible reentry, starting with the mid-Pliocene era that is almost locked in already.  (Previously reported in CL #1319).
Carl

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Climate Letter #1336

US carbon emissions moved up sharply in 2018 for the second worst performance of the past twenty years.  This post has a chart of the four major contributing factors since 1990, each of which has had its own unique story over the years.  They all took a turn for the worse in 2018.  The two biggest sectors, power and transportation, do have things going on that create considerable hopes for better performance soon to come but everything will need to be pushed much harder for any useful goals to be accomplished.

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Which parts of the US will suffer most from climate change, and how soon?  A magazine called Fast Company takes a good look at the subject in two separate articles.  The first one does so mainly with maps:
–The second has more discussion and also places the problem within an international perspective:
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Globally, and on average, where will temperature increases have the strongest effects?  A professional statistician has picked up on the fact, which has been discussed many times before in these letters, that climate change is raising air temperatures much faster over land surfaces than over the oceans.  That has real consequences for humans—since we practically all live on land.  He has added some pertinent information based on the fact that there are wide differences just within the land category that bring significance to which particular region one happens to be living in.  Not many regions are especially close to “average,” so while living on land by itself may be defined as unfortunate, one is in still worse shape if living in whatever land parts are warming up much faster than the others.  This work finds that living in the Northern Hemisphere is a disadvantage relative to the South, and then if you look closely at his map (from Berkeley) it appears that the Eastern half of the NH is warming more quickly than the West.  It is certainly an imprecise guide, but I believe the basic principle is well-conceived, with consequences for those affected.
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Evidence of deep, slow-moving ocean currents has been found.  According to basic theory, when the waters of a major surface current known as the Gulf Stream turn cold in the North Atlantic they descend to a deeper level and from there start traveling around the globe for as long as a thousand years before resurfacing, while remaining cold along the way.  This story tells about a crew of scientists who were able to find evidence of one such track in a deep location far from the point of origin.
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Another study of long-term processes at work on Earth’s surface shows how the Sahara region has repeatedly swung back and forth between lush greenery and dry desert every 20,000 years, under the influence of regular sunlight cycles.  The immediate driver in this case was found to be monsoon rain pattern cycles rather than much longer ice age cycles, as had once been suspected.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1335

New research improves our understanding of how heat is stored and transported within ocean basins.  One big takeaway is simply a confirmation of the fact that when we talk about how the planet is warming due to the greenhouse effect, over 90% of that warming is actually stored in ocean water.  The remainder is divided up into relatively small amounts stored in rocks, soils, vegetation, waters and other densely-packed materials found on land surfaces, plus an increment that is kept in the atmosphere as the outpouring of heat energy back to space is being progressively retarded, plus yet another increment that is converted to a different kind of energy altogether when ice melts to water.  We also learn more about the uneven way that ocean water heats up and how heated water is transported from place to place in the regions down below.  The total rate of accumulation appears to have been remarkably steady over different time periods.  No reason for this is given, but I think it is something that needs an explanation.  How oceans heat up, and what that means over centuries and millennia to come, is a subject of at least as much importance as the atmospheric heating we always talk about.

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–The full study, which is interesting but also puzzling in some respects, has open access:
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An annual report from Munich Re on the global cost of natural disasters in 2018.  The financial toll was far below the $350 billion recorded the previous year in a record hurricane season, but above the 30-year average of $140 billion.  The US suffered the heaviest losses from disasters globally, mainly from wildfires and hurricanes.
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A video interview with prominent climate scientist Michael Mann.  Michael has never been known to shy away from saying things people would rather not hear about, in contrast with the reputation gained by the IPCC.  This piece, which was issued by YouTube a few months ago, gives us the latest thinking of a well-informed leader.
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Katherine Hayhoe is another climate scientist who has become popular by making an extraordinary effort to reach out to young people with educational materials about the dangers of climate change.  She has a website of the very uncomplicated sort that could be useful to someone you know:
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Coverage of the human response to the urgent need for climate action by PBS NewsHour.  This written report does an unusually credible job, for a media outlet, of analyzing some of the underlying problems and recommending approaches that could lead to improvement.  The producer gave this a lot of good thought.
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Another step forward for hydrogen-powered passenger trains.  They are a perfect replacement for trains that now run on diesel, and will be rolled out in the UK by 2022.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1334

Antarctic sea ice suffered a massive decline in December, leading to a record low on January 1.  Unlike the Arctic, a high melt-rate for sea ice has been unusual for Antarctic summers until just the last several years.  “Although it is too soon for us to isolate what caused the rapid December decline and recent record low extents, it is likely that unusual atmospheric conditions and high sea surface temperatures are playing a role.” The decline is perceived as a clear new signal of global warming.

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The lush Monteverde cloud forest in Costa Rica is drying out (The Guardian)..  This unique ecosystem, along with sea ice and coral reefs, is one of the world’s three most sensitive indicators of global warming.
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Jellyfish populations are booming around the world, and causing mayhem.  These creatures thrive in waters that have grown warmer and more polluted, and they don’t require much oxygen.  This story from ABC News includes an amazing photo of a two-ton Nomura jelly with a human diver swimming nearby.
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Soot and smoke from North American wildfires are contributing to the meltdown of mountain glaciers.  Surface darkening that allows greater absorption of sunlight has been observed in recent years over broadly extended areas.
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Haiti leads the world in present-day deforestation. According to satellite imagery, only about one percent of primary virgin forest now remains in place.  “And because of the deforestation, they estimate more than half Haiti’s species will be wiped out by the year 2035.”
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Some scientists have revised their forecast for abrupt sea level rise from glacial collapse in West Antarctica.  Their previous work attracted headlines because of dramatic projections seen as possible for later in this century.  Those effects, in the form of a specific type of progressive ice sheet collapse, have now been postponed for up to two centuries.  New ideas and further debate are likely to be forthcoming, so stay tuned.
Carl

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Climate Letter #1333

More of East Antarctica’s glaciers in the Totten area are found to be losing ice.  All of the melting comes from below, causing their surfaces to lose altitude year by year, as disclosed by satellite readings.  These losses were not detected prior to 2008.  A speeding up of glacial movement has also been measured.  Many natural processes are involved, but on the bottom line:  “New research suggests that more glaciers in East Antarctica are losing ice due to warming oceans.”  Ocean waters that have been warming farther north have had time to circulate all the way to the pole, and that influence is destined to keep growing.

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On Greenland, new signs of methane emissions have been found in glacial meltwater (Scientific American).  The source, while still of uncertain magnitude, is likely to be ancient carbon buried beneath the glaciers much like that known to exist in permafrost areas.  Methane’s potency as a greenhouse gas makes this especially worrisome in an area that is already overheated.
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Alaska’s winter so far has been much warmer than normal, along with greatly reduced snowfall.  The state is considered more vulnerable to climate change than any other, all year long.
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A timely description of the worst extinction event in Earth’s history (Mongabay).  This article was based on interviews with the authors of a study that received much attention when published last month, offering a new explanation of the main cause of the loss of life in marine ecosystems (see CL #1317, Dec. 7).  It reveals further insight into the nature of their research, emphasizing the importance of what humans are presently doing to change the marine environment and why it cannot remain unchecked.  “The ocean cannot be cooled or oxygenated on a global scale by any feasible means. The only sustainable solution to reduce the risk of temperature-dependent hypoxia is to halt the anthropogenic accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere.”
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China’s colossal international infrastructure project will enable industrial development that would likely be a disaster for the climate (Yale e360).  More than 70 countries have signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative.  “While China has imposed a cap on coal consumption at home, its coal and energy companies are on a building spree overseas.”
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The fascinating story of a California megaflood, winter of 1861-62 (Scientific American, Jan. 1, 2013).  This utterly freakish event had nothing to do with climate change, and no other explanation is given for ”atmospheric rivers” of this magnitude.
Carl

Posted in Daily Climate Letters | Comments Off on Climate Letter #1333