Jim’s Global Warming Thread

[cx]

Interesting method of measurement that I've not ever heard of, Jim.

Bottom line for me is still the same, though. Humans will adapt or die. I suspect there will eventually be a long period of adapting - well, long in human perceptions, microscopically short in universe perception (is that a thing?) - potentially followed by the potential loss of still another species.

Along the way we can have Good Ole Boys launching their boats from parking garages in the Miami area so's to go out to fish the Miami Flats, formerly known as Miami Beach. New Orleans, which was a poor idea at conception, will finally hafta accept the reality that Lake Pontchartrain wants to be one with the Gulf of Mexico and that they will need to become one with Baton Rouge, or maybe even Shreveport.

Humans adjusted when the ice moved north out of North America, they'll likely adjust when the ocean replaces a lot of it. Might be fun. Might not.

I'll be dead.

[jadnashua]

Some of the preliminary research implies 20-30 years could be a major tipping point. Some speculate that Thwaites glacier might only have 5-years...that would be a major PITA. Time will tell. I might make it 20 years, but not likely 30!

[jadnashua]

One thing that is a major driver to the jet stream that has air flowing around the northern pole of earth is the temperature differences between the tropics and the Arctic. As things warm up, the differences are tending to diminish. The Arctic is warming FAR faster than those areas further south and this is making the jet stream weaker, and less stable, allowing it to wander more and further than it has in the past.

This has the result of messing with the jet stream. It's almost unheard of to reach the mid-80's in April in New England, but we're likely to see that by the week's end.

It's possible, but not currently considered likely that a tropical storm may form in the Gulf of Mexico later this week. The jet stream will dip quite low towards the south, and if it sticks around long enough, could cause a storm to spin up. It usually takes more than a day or so to accomplish that, and it appears the event won't exist long enough to allow that to happen, but a tropical storm in mid-April is way earlier in the season than historically seen before. The hurricane season doesn't officially start until 1 June.

Water expands as it warms, and that is part of the cause of sea level rising, but as measured by a tidal gauge in Lake Ponchatrain, it's risen 8" in the last 40 years or so. That's playing hell with some of the low-lying areas in Southern Louisiana and Florida. Houston, New Orleans, Miami are seeing leap tides flooding more and more areas, and during a storm, more and more damage.

[jadnashua]

The average ocean surface temperature reached an all time high since records began earlier this April. The higher the temperature of both the air and water, the more moisture it can hold in the air and the more evaporates.

The jet stream this week was predicted to dip far enough south to potentially stir up a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico, but also as expected, it did not stick around long enough to get the winds high enough to qualify, but parts of Florida have received as much as 20" of rain from the storm that did form. It's better without the winds which can drive storm surges, but still devastating in a primarily fairly flat terrain so it can take a long time to drain. Just a small air temperature rise can allow a significant increase in the moisture content.

[jadnashua]

Areas in Florida near Ft Lauderdale received as much as 25" of rain from the storm discussed above. It was a slow morning storm. Things might have been better for them if the winds had progressed to a tropical storm as it would have moved through the area faster.

Ocean levels around the world are not rising evenly. They are influenced by multiple factors including:
- water temperature
- winds
- currents
- glacial melting

It's not like putting water in a bathtub.

Since a year after hurricane Katrina in 2005, the level of Lake Poncetrain has risen 8". That lake level is directly related to the sea level in the area. Combined with the loss of marshlands, the areas around New Orleans is at a higher risk than when it was lower and those natural buffers were in place. This study was released this week. The more we know, the we learn we don't know. It's kind of scary but also interesting.

[jadnashua]

When sea ice freezes, it expels a fair amount of the salt. This increases the salinity of the water surrounding it, which becomes denser. This water then tends to fall to the sea floor, and along the way, ends up causing a current as it moves along the depths.

When animals die in the ocean, both plants and animals, that debris slowly falls to the bottom of the ocean as well. If nothing else happened, that would cause the nutrients contained in that dead sea life to become sequestered, and the ability of the sea to support new life diminish.

What the falling, denser, saltier water does in the resulting current, is keep a turnover in the depths back to the surface. In the act of sinking, it also takes some of the dissolved carbon dioxide with it, and with the high pressures and cold temperatures, helps to sequester some of that carbon, acting somewhat as a moderator to delay the reaction of the increasing carbon in the atmosphere. Along the way, though, it lowers the pH of the water, which creates its own problems.

About 3-million years ago, the CO2 levels were nearly as high as they are now, at about 400ppb. How it got that high is believed to be because of a much more active volcanoes spewing that, and other gasses into the atmosphere. Over the next million years, the CO2 levels gradually dropped to the area of about 180ppb just prior to the advent of the industrial age when man started to burn huge amounts of fossil fuels. Since the early 1800's, the CO2 concentration has jumped to about 420ppb, that took over a million years to be reduced.

The deep ocean upwelling current effects, particularly around the Antarctic which has seen a loss of sea ice of nearly 80% at the end of summer from previous, recent history, is expected to reduce that deep ocean upwelling by about 40% by 2050. The melting glaciers also dilute that saltier water, which isn't as dense, thus lowering the amount falling to the depths. This is expected to affect the ocean's ability to support life as we know it, reducing fish stocks, and the environmental stresses that will mean for things that depend on that, like whales, some sea birds, and related stock. Plankton, and the other lowest levels of life won't be able to persist at their current levels for lack of nutrients. Those feed things on up the food chain.

The north Atlantic gyre is slowing down slightly, but that isn't expected to collapse significantly through the end of the century at the minimum, but that also could be found to be wrong, given the current knowledge we have. The Arctic Ocean is expected to continue to lose sea ice coverage, but the way the land interacts is more complex there than in the southern hemisphere - the Arctic Ocean is water surrounded by land, versus ice covered land (up to 2-miles thick) surrounded by ocean around Antarctica. Further research may eventually point to a different end result. Slowing the changes is still the only prudent goal, but some results are already inevitable. We just don't know how far it will go, but are pretty certain of the path.

Change is normally a gradual, long-term thing (like the million years to come off of the previous CO2 peak), but the reverse of that happened in a bit over 200-years versus a million. There's a HUGE amount of stored carbon in the frozen land, and cold oceans, that slight temperature rises are releasing along with all of that that man has affected. Now that it's started, it will be hard to contain. The process to absorb and store that carbon requires less direct additions, and the resulting temperature rises is releasing some that had been stored over the last million years that brought the CO2 levels back down from that peak.

[jadnashua]

April heatwaves in the far east are setting all time early season records with peaks over 40C (106F) in numerous areas. Schools have been closed and people are dying from heat stroke. Unlike say Death Valley where it's typically hot and dry, many of these areas are also very humid making the high temperatures more dangerous.

[cx]

But some ocean flora appear to be happier about the warming, Jim.

Although some of the Florida beach goers may not be.

[jadnashua]

Everything has a preferred environment, and there's ample evidence those things that can move are moving as the oceans warm. This means stuff that wasn't normal in one area is getting new species, and some of the 'regular' ones are moving out.

This can be evidenced in the king crabs pretty much vacating their normal range off Alaska, causing that fishing season to collapse, the lobsters moving further north and further out to sea in the northeast, and sea bass showing up in areas further north than ever seen before along with dolphins, tuna, etc. moving further north now that the ocean is a bit warmer. Mackerel can now be fished off of Greenland and Iceland that had never (in human history anyway) been close enough to land where it was a viable fish stock to harvest.

Throw in some areas that are getting the salinity being diluted with glacier melting, and the pH changing as the ocean absorb more CO2 producing some acid in the process, and things are changing. They think that change in salinity off of Alaska and the temperature of the water near the bottom where crabs hatch and grow as to why they are literally gone from the traditional fishing areas.

[jadnashua]

There are 40 glaciers around the world that we have long-term data on. Since 1970, they have lost an average of 30meters of thickness. The rate of loss on the peaks of Europe had significant losses the last few years because of extended heatwaves and minimal snowfall. Some of the rivers, used for a lot of cargo traffic have been so low, traffic has diminished significantly. It has also led to water shortages. They expect most glaciers will be gone in Europe this century.

[jadnashua]

FWIW, the US characterizes an extreme weather event as one that causes a $1b or more damage. In 1980, those averaged about one in 82-days. Last year in the USA, one occurred less than every two weeks, or nearly 5x more often. Those are in inflation adjusted dollars. Some of that is related to more people and population density, but still. Things that were characterized as once a century storm or situation, now seem to be happening FAR more often. Weather will always vary, but climate is the trends and averages, and those appear to be going only one way towards hotter. How that affects individual areas, some will become drier, some will become wetter, and the depth of those changes are becoming more extreme.

It's not just in the USA...look up some of the damage done in floods in Europe last year...some buildings many hundreds of years old, washed away in an unusual flooding event. If you look, you can find lots of examples of that.

[cx]

Originally Posted by Jim

Those are in inflation adjusted dollars.

Well, sort of.

Originally Posted by Jim

If you look, you can find lots of examples of that.

I think that's a large and important part of the equation, Jim, a whole lot more looking today than in past.

No doubt there is change afoot, but I'll still stay with my basic bottom line; Humans will adapt or die. By conservative estimates, more than 90 percent of all animal species that have inhabited earth have gone extinct. Contrary to some human belief systems, the universe really doesn't care whether the earth's humans last even another hundred or thousand years. The current residents do, of course, but none of us will ever know, eh?

Most of the good fly fishing streams have been destroyed or overrun, so what's the point, really?

We're likely to continue to consume our environment and foul our nest until it's no longer usable. At that point, will we have found somewhere else to go? And developed a means to get there? I dunno. But if we do, the cycle will simply begin again. C'est la vie!

[jadnashua]

There are things we can do to at least slow down the CO2 atmospheric increases. Nature will continue to try to remove that 'excess', but from the last big peak, it took a million years to occur before we started to disrupt the natural cycle.

There are ways to remove and sequester CO2, but doing it requires energy. We can't easily do that with existing power, as that often generates as much or more in the process. So, that would require an energy source that does not create CO2 in the process.

There are ways to capture CO2 from fossil fuel plants, but they add to the operating costs. If that became required, it would make renewables even more competitive. As it stands now, the latest ones are about on par with building and operating new fossil fuel plants. When you add in the environmental costs, they're far less expensive, but that's a cost many refuse to acknowledge.

Note, methane is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2. The last administration removed many of the capture requirements that were imposed. Texas in particular, has a huge number of active and passive oil and gas wells that spew a lot of methane if it doesn't get just burned. Recent satellite sensors can now detect these gasses, and it's kind of scary how much is being released. Capping and maintaining the required systems is an ongoing maintenance issue that people argued wasn't needed. Some, myself included, would argue that was ill-conceived.

[jadnashua]

Since a survey of the glacial icefields atop this tallest mountain in Africa done in 1912, the area has shrunk when measured in 2006 by 90% to about one square mile and is smaller yet today. It could be gone in 10 years. The water from this supports a wide diversity of life, including plants and animals. A lot of the local income is from tourism that will dry up both figuratively and literally.

[jadnashua]

FWIW, the earth's oceans act like a huge heat sink, and buffer both the CO2 and heat. Since we've been keeping widespread records, April 2023 was the warmest the earth's oceans have been.

It appears that Le Nino is developing. The previous 3-years of La Nina had kept the heat rise somewhat restricted, but it still occurred ever upwards. This periodic shift between the cooling and warming has been going on as long as we can remember, and also shows up in the sediments as the volume of things like plankton varies with the temperatures as they die and fall to the bottom and accumulate. We do not yet know how hot or how long Le Nino will last, or if it will end up as sort of a lull, but it appears to be increasing both in size and peak right now, and may peak this fall.

Historically, this causes both precipitation and heat levels to shift around, so some areas could experience extremes on both situations...time will tell.