Jim’s Global Warming Thread

[jadnashua]

The following are screen shots from my phone running a neat, free app called MyRadar. It's available for smartphones and WIN machines. It represents historical data...no projections, or reasons why it is why it is...I'll let you infer what you want from them. You can pick most any place on the earth, and if there's sufficient historical data, get a view of that place's results.

[jadnashua]

Last year was the largest melting of sea ice in the Antarctic since we've been able to measure it via satellite...this year, it's 52,000sqmi less coverage than last, for a new modern record. If it keeps this up, there won't be much forming through the winter as the ocean temperatures will be too high. Likely to take decades, but we need to crunch some numbers as the baseline knowledge keeps increasing and we learn more about how things interact. Many of our previous conclusions have proven wrong as new data is uncovered. The more you know, the more you know you don't know, but it can still lead to better informed forecasts...look at weather forecasts from 20-years ago...they're much more accurate today than they were. Predicting climate is harder as more things interact.

The sea ice does three major things:
- increases the albedo (the reflectivity of incoming IR waves) minimizing it from adding that heat to the ocean
- reduces the winter wave action that can beat on the glacial ice promoting fracture and melting
- acts as a cork to help hold back the glaciers

So, less sea ice appears to be unbalancing the whole situation by there being so much less of it each year. Note, it's similar in the Arctic...Russia has commissioned some new ice breakers, and has run some cargo ships through the passage as a demonstration that it's possible for at least a few months during the summer, decreasing shipping times and distances on various routes, saving money.

The final report on this study in Antarctica is due sometime in March...may take a bit longer for peer review, but likely soon.

[jadnashua]

They've been able to monitor the sea ice coverage using satellites fairly accurately since only around 2014. That year, they measured a bit over 7M sqmi of sea ice around Antarctica. This year, it's 700K, or about a reduction of 90%. They say they need another 10-years of data to get a better handle on what this really means, and how it will play out. It could start to revert back to more coverage, but the indicators aren't pointing that way. As I mentioned, the sea ice around Antarctica, or lack of it, has a considerable impact on the glaciers there. Should all of that glacial ice melt, there's enough water to raise the sea levels worldwide over 200', and the rise we've seen over the last century has increased in rate significantly in the last few decades. Sea ice is not an indication of sea level, since it's already floating, so even when it melts, it doesn't change the overall level. How it interacts with the glaciers, is another story still being resolved. There are a lot of people studying this, and more comes out almost monthly. What you may have 'known' yesterday, may now be out of date, as this may next month. The trends are pretty consistent, though.

In the following image, the grey areas indicate the uncertainty, which is related to the quantity and quality of the available measurements. Note that those have improved since the age of satellite world coverage started as there are now more consistent measurements, and those are now global versus often spotty reporting from limited numbers of places around the world.

It's much easier for the oceans to absorb heat and CO2 since they cover more area on the earth's surface than land does, and there is a fair amount of both vertical and horizontal movement and mixing going on. The air temperatures will tend to vary much more.

[cx]

I think the bottom line remains the same, regardless the advances in our ability to study and measure, Jim: We'll either adapt or die.

A 200 ft rise in sea levels if all those glaciers in Antarctica melt will certainly change the landscape (pun intended) of the real estate market in the shorter term. Would that be enough to change the whole irony of that country song about having oceanfront property in Arizona?

I did not create this thread, by the way.

[jadnashua]

2012 was a first for the fisheries industry in Greenland...they started to have a viable mackerel catch...prior to that, the fish were too far away to make it viable to go out to catch them. As a result of the warming, those fish moved into the area, followed by tuna and dolphins which eat those fishes.

It is now estimated that if the slope of sea temperature rise continues, the entire Arctic will be sea ice free during part of the summer. The albedo will then allow the ocean's temperature to increase faster, higher air and water temperatures mean more water can be held in the air, which means that more rain and snow could be falling. Note, last year was the first year that rain was recorded on the high glaciers of Greenland since they've had weather monitoring stations.

The argument is, is this really a natural perturbation of the climate, or is it man-made. So far, and we can look back over 600,000-years via ice cores that record things like the amount of precipitation and the CO2 levels, the levels and rate of change since the advent of the industrial revolution where we started to burn fossil fuels, is unlike any other time in that history- the changes are MUCH faster, and the levels are higher than previous peaks. This study was completed last year, prior to that, some of it was speculation, now we have the data to back it up. Satellite data is still not complete, but it's only been about 14-years since we had coverage for pretty much the entire earth, and have been able to monitor some parameters at all, especially in very remote areas. Prior to that, we couldn't measure that many places across the oceans, or regularly surveil deep within the Antarctic, or in the middle of deserts on a regular basis, if at all. Now, we can get data nearly every day in high detail. IT takes time to analyze that data to try to determine and separate weather variability versus climate, so the longer we can make these observations, the more accurate the analysis will become. Trends take time to become established with any reliability. What we see has caused us to improve out models of how we think things work. They get updated regularly, and in many cases, the actual results are getting close to those that were modeled. The first models were fairly simplistic, but we keep finding other things that affect the outcome, so the model gets updated. By no means is it perfect, nor will it likely ever be, but it keeps getting better.

[jadnashua]

Short answer: NO. The better question to ask is does climate change CHANGE atmospheric rivers: YES.

Then, you'd ask why and how?

Each increase in air temperature (1-degree F) increases the potential moisture holding capacity of the air by about 4%. Given the world average of about 2-degrees, that amounts to a bit over 7% more moisture in any air.

So, while atmospheric rivers have been occurring for eons, they do hold more moisture now. This can result in heavier precipitation, and because the air is warmer, the snow levels end up higher up with the resulting rain potentially melting some of the snow that may have fallen or remains from other storms.

[jadnashua]

We have had surface ocean water temperature records for some areas of the earth's oceans for many years and satellite sensors can obtain in for much of them, but it's almost non-existent for bottom and deeper water temperatures.

One unusual surface measurement from a buoy off Oregon's coast recently showed a 7C temperature rise in ONE hour! It appears that deep water is holding a bunch more heat than we thought was possible.

They've been modeling things and improving those over about the last 25-years as more data comes in.

The lobster (if you didn't know, they live on the bottom) catches off the US NE coast are down, they're also getting infected with parasites as the water temperature rises, king crab season was basically closed because there are almost none to be found in the normal range off Alaska; lionfish, an invasive species, is moving north along the east coast, messing with the normal fisheries.

A UN report is due to be released today...a consensus of scientists from 200-countries, there's time, but we have to get serious about this. They're now thinking the tipping point may be as early as the 2030's versus the 2050's.

[Karls tile Inc]

Meh I remember when they were claiming global cooling. There was even a documentary with Leonard Nimoy as the narrator. It could be simply a narrative used to make money.

[John Bridge]

I may have mentioned this before, but I was in the Army in Alaska when it became a state in 1959. There is a glacier on the Kenai Peninsula SW out of Anchorage near the town of Portage. In the fifties/sixties they built a parking lot there about a minute's walk from the glacier's nose.

When I visited Alaska with my wife in 2007 the trail to the nose of the glacier was a mile or so long. It had receded that much in the half-century I had been away.

Additionally, the average winter temperature in Anchorage, where I had been stationed, had risen about ten degrees. They no longer needed engine heaters on their vehicles.

The atmosphere is certainly warming at a somewhat alarming rate.. The only thing that might be contentious is what's causing it.

[jadnashua]

Back when Glacier Bay area was first discovered by the white man, they did not realize it was actually a bay...the glacial ice extended out into the sea. Today, it's over 60-miles from the sea to the head of the glacier.

When I did a day trip from an Alaskan Cruise, one stop was in Juneau...earlier that year, a large section of the glacier had calved off, exposing a HUGE waterfall nobody realized was there.

As I said, the sea ice around Antarctica, that we can now monitor quite well with satellites, is 10% of what it was when that coverage became available in the late 1970's at the end of summer.

If you look at the screen prints from the MyRadar application, for any city/town in the world...you'll see it is warmer on average now versus when the history data started (about 1850). The ice cores analyzed recently from Antarctica cover the last 600K years...the CO2 levels are higher now, with a more rapid increase, than anywhere in that time period. What's different? The industrial revolution and the burning of fossil fuels for heating, power, transportation. The UN report, the summary is available, but the full report is due soon, has the scientists from 200 countries that point to CO2 and methane releases as the causes of the warming. It's hard to get consensus between even a few places, but 200 seems pretty firm in the assessment.

There's a huge amount of carbon freeing up as the permafrost melts, and there's a huge amount of methane locked up under the Arctic such that there are now areas where it looks like the water is boiling from all of the gasses being released as the water warms. Beneath the cold, dark depths of the Arctic Ocean sit vast reserves of methane. These stores rest in a delicate balance, stable as a solid called methane hydrates, at very specific pressures and temperatures. If that balance gets tipped, the methane can get released into the water above and eventually make its way to the atmosphere. In its gaseous form, methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, warming the Earth about 30 times more efficiently than carbon dioxide. Understanding possible sources of atmospheric methane is critical for accurately predicting future climate change. https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0322135221.htm

FWIW, our last president rescinded many of the methane release/collection requirements related to oil and gas drilling operations that his predecessor implemented.

[makethatkerdistick]

My family in Germany reports dramatic climate change events that have wreaked havoc on the health of a forest near to where my parents live. Absolutely unprecedented as long as my father (who is 70) can remember. He is a hobby gardener/forester, so he notices many traces, small and large, of how drought conditions impact trees.

Here in Texas, heat is par for the course, but every increase will push, for instance, the limits of what people, especially elderly ones, can stand. If there is a power outage, lives are in danger for sure. Statistically, 2022 has been in the top five for warmest on record in North Texas.

What can I personally do? I try to mitigate and increase efficiency of my home to radically slash my energy needs while remaining comfortable. It has become somewhat of a hobby as I want to see how far I can go before I hit a wall of diminishing returns. Been exploring quad pane windows recently. Despite all the home efficiency engineering fun, I remain highly concerned about our future. Impact on the availability of affordable and decent food is another issue that will get to us. Here in the US we are still fairly privileged, especially if we have decent jobs that give us a financial buffer. For the poor, climate change has more immediate consequences.

[jadnashua]

In the next couple of years, you will likely start to see vacuum insulated glass panels...much more efficient than most anything you can buy today. Think vacuum bottle. No air molecules, no heat transfer. There will also be nearly clear solar cells able to be applied to the glass as well. Not super efficient, so the payback may not be useful, but worth looking into.

[makethatkerdistick]

Maybe so, but the frame will always remain the weakest spot by far, limiting the overall R value of the unit. Actually, quad pane center of glass values are pretty high, too. Not as good as vacuum glass units, but quite impressive.

[jadnashua]

Krill are maybe the second layer up in the food chain for the oceans. Diatoms probably qualify as the first layer. Krill hatch under the ice sheets around Antarctica where they initially live to avoid predators. With the significant loss of sea ice, the last 30-years or so we've been able to monitor it with satellite data, that is putting lots of pressure on keeping the ocean's food chain intact.

Things that live in the ocean, when they die, fall to the bottom. Along the way, some of them can be eaten, and some get eaten while on the bottom, but huge amounts decompose. Those nutrients are critical to the productivity of the ocean's wildlife. There's a natural upwelling of those nutrients through various means, including currents, wind, and temperature differences. Salt water is denser than fresh water. That tends to prevent the upwelling of that nutrient rich water. The dynamics of that action is complex, and we're still learning about how it works, but we can measure it. A report out this week researching that indicates that the volume of that upwelling has decreased 40% since we've been taking measurements. We do not know the full ramifications of this, or whether it is likely a natural variation, but it appears that it is related to the amount of fresh water melt from the glaciers coming off of Antarctica, and the decrease in seasonal sea ice. Penguins' main food is krill, and they are now having to swim much further out away from their nesting areas to find food. This appears to be affecting those populations. What other changes, we'll have to wait and see.

[jadnashua]

Researchers in both the Arctic around Norway, and around Antarctica have found and are studying marks on the ocean floor that are caused by the grounded edge of a glacier as it rises and falls with the tides. This creates some ridges up to about 2.5M high, and lets you get an idea of how fast the glacier was moving during retreat. The records in Norway are fairly recent and are being studied, but preliminary results seem to show a retreat of 30-600M per DAY. The last time that was severe was after the little ice age about 10,000 years ago. Advancing glaciers wipe out those ridges in the ocean, just like they scour things down on the land they came from.

This sort of thing hasn't been included in any of the models that predicted a much slower retreat, so the models will be updated after the research is completed and peer reviewed.

What we thought we knew even last year, is now showing up as too simplistic, but all of the research is still pointing towards warming at a faster rate than models predicted. https://theconversation.com/new-rese...melting-203277