On September 20, 2016, 375 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including 30 Nobel laureates, published an open letter to draw attention to the serious risks of climate change. The letter warns that the consequences of opting out of the Paris agreement would be severe and long-lasting for our planet’s climate and for the international credibility of the United States.

A full list of signers follows the text of the letter.

Here is the energy balance diagram for our Earth, explained in IPCC FAQ 1.1. The “Back Radiation” makes the greenhouse effect. It is larger than the solar radiation reaching the ground, and measured by a global radiation measurement network.

Eyebrows would be raised if American crocodiles, found on the southern tip of Florida, decided to relocate to New York’s Fifth Avenue or Moroccan camels suddenly joined the tourist throng outside Buckingham Palace in London. Yet this is the scale of species shift that appears to be under way in Alaska.

In July, researchers in Cape Krusenstern national monument on the north-west coast of Alaska were startled to discover a nest containing Caspian terns on the gravelly beach of a lagoon. The birds were an incredible 1,000 miles further north than the species had been previously recorded.

“There was plenty of shock, it is a very unusual situation,” said Dr Martin Robards, Arctic program director at the Wildlife Conservation Society, which found the nest. “We checked with Caspian tern experts and they were all very surprised they were this far north. We get Arctic terns here but these terns are much bigger, they really stand out.”

The terns, usually found in Washington state, successfully bred and chicks have now flown the nest. While it remains to be seen whether Caspian terns will become ensconced long-term within the Arctic circle, the epic relocation is emblematic of how warming temperatures are causing a huge upheaval in the basic rhythms of Alaska’s environment. Next week, scientists will gather at the White House’s first ever Arctic science meeting to deliver the confronting news.

(August 2016 was the hottest month on Earth in all of the past 136 years. Though the Earth is cooling into fall, September 2016 looks like it will be the hottest September ever recorded. Overall, 2016 is on track to be the hottest year on record by a significant margin. Image source: Earth Observatory.)

Temperatures in these ranges would represent the hottest September on record by a pretty big margin (about 0.13 C globally). Meanwhile, the annual averages for the first nine months of the year would hit near 1.27 C above 1880s averages if the NASA measure saw a warming similar to that showing up in Stokes’s early NCEP/NCAR reanalysis figures — a measure disturbingly close to the 1.5 C departure levels that represent the first major global climate threshold, a level that many scientists have advised us we’d be wise to avoid.

Planet at its hottest in 115,000 years thanks to climate change, experts say
Global warming is said to be bringing temperatures last seen during an interglacial era, when sea level was 6-9 meters (20-30ft) higher than today
Oliver Milman in New York
@olliemilman
Tuesday 4 October 2016 15.00 AEDT Last modified on Tuesday 4 October 2016 15.56 AEDT

The global temperature has increased to a level not seen for 115,000 years, requiring daunting technological advances that will cost the coming generations hundreds of trillions of dollars, according to the scientist widely credited with bringing climate change to the public’s attention.

A new paper submitted by James Hansen, a former senior Nasa climate scientist, and 11 other experts states that[b] the 2016 temperature is likely to be 1.25C above pre-industrial times[/b], following a warming trend where the world has heated up at a rate of 0.18C per decade over the past 45 years.

This rate of warming is bringing Earth in line with temperatures last seen in the Eemian period, an interglacial era ending 115,000 years ago when there was much less ice and the sea level was 6-9 meters (20-30ft) higher than today.

In order to meet targets set at last year’s Paris climate accord to avoid runaway climate change, “massive CO2 extraction” costing an eye-watering $104tn to $570tn will be required over the coming century with “large risks and uncertain feasibility” as to its success, the paper states.

The North Pole is an insane 36 degrees (20C) warmer than normal as winter descends
By Chris Mooney and Jason Samenow November 17 at 1:41 PM
Political people in the United States are watching the chaos in Washington in the moment. But some people in the science community are watching the chaos somewhere else — the Arctic.

It’s polar night there now — the sun isn’t rising in much of the Arctic. That’s when the Arctic is supposed to get super-cold, when the sea ice that covers the vast Arctic Ocean is supposed to grow and thicken.

But in fall of 2016 — which has been a zany year for the region, with multiple records set for low levels of monthly sea ice — something is totally off. The Arctic is super-hot, even as a vast area of cold polar air has been displaced over Siberia.

Storing carbon dioxide underground by turning it into rock
Date:
November 18, 2016
Source:
American Chemical Society
Summary:
In November, the Paris Climate Agreement goes into effect to reduce global carbon emissions. To achieve the set targets, experts say capturing and storing carbon must be part of the solution. Several projects throughout the world are trying to make that happen. Now, a study on one of those endeavors has found that within two years, carbon dioxide injected into basalt transformed into solid rock.

A core sample from a carbon storage project in Washington state showed that carbon dioxide injected deep underground into basalt rock turned into the carbonate mineral ankerite in less than two years.
Credit: American Chemical Society

Governments agreed
a long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels;
to aim to limit the increase to 1.5°C, since this would significantly reduce risks and the impacts of climate change;

Global temperatures showing the change from pre-industrial times. The global temperatures for January to September 2016 were approximately 1.2°C above pre-industrial levels and 0.88°C (1.58°F) above the average for the 1961-1990 reference period.
Credit: NOAA; NASA/ UK Met Office; CRU

With the latest sea ice data for November just in, 2016 continues to be a dramatic year in the Arctic. Following an unusually warm start to the year and record low ice in several months, a markedly sluggish freeze-up season in the back end of the year is also seeing records tumble.

Earlier this week, scientists confirmed the area of Arctic Ocean covered by sea ice – known as sea ice extent – reached a record low in November. Now, figures from the Piomas (Pan-Arctic Ice Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System) confirm the volume of sea ice also hit record lows.

At close to 8,000 cubic kilometres (cubic km), total sea ice volume in November stood at just 48% of the long-term average and the smallest of any November in the satellite record stretching back to 1979.

Taken together, these findings show little sign of recovery after an exceptionally poor start to the winter freeze-up season. This doesn’t bode well for survival of the ice through next year’s summer melting season, say scientists.

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for October 2016 tied with 2003 as the third highest for October in the 137-year period of record, at 0.73°C (1.31°F) above the 20th century average of 14.0°C (57.1°F).

2016 will be the hottest year on record, UN says | Environment | The ...
https://www.theguardian.com › Environment › Climate change
Nov 14, 2016 - ... Organisation figures show global temperature is 1.2C above pre-industrial levels and will set a new ... Monday 14 November 2016 06.02 EST.

Paris Agreement | Climate Action
https://ec.europa.eu › ... › International action on climate change › Climate negotiations
Paris Agreement. ... a long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels;; to aim to limit the ...

Highview Power Storage technology in focus in energy storage plant
December 14, 2016 by Nancy Owano


Highview Power Storage technology in focus in energy storage plant
(Tech Xplore)—UK-based Highview Power Storage is a company to watch in the energy storage market—using liquefied air as the energy storage medium. When the liquid air warms up it expands and can drive a turbine to make electricity, said a report about the company from the BBC.
The company is in the business of energy storage solutions for utility and distributed power systems.
Their expertise lies in "cold" energy storage and Editor-at-Large Tim Sandle, Digital Journal, explained its significance.
"Cold (or cryogenic) energy storage promises to be revolutionary, in terms of energy supply, and also aid the environment at the same time through recycling material. A cryogenic energy facility stores power from renewables, or off-peak generation. This is undertaken by chilling air into liquid form, where, at minus 190 degrees Celsius, the air condenses into a pale blue mobile liquid. When the liquid is stored (in a special insulated tank) and later heated up, the air expands and this can power a turbine to generate electricity."

eep stores of carbon in northern peatlands may be safe from rising temperatures, according to a team of researchers from several U.S.-based institutions.
And that is good news for now, the researchers said.
Florida State University research scientist Rachel Wilson and University of Oregon graduate student Anya Hopple are the first authors on a new study published today in Nature Communications. The study details experiments suggesting that carbon stored in peat—a highly organic material found in marsh or damp regions—may not succumb to the Earth's warming as easily as scientists thought.
That means if these northern peatlands—found in the upper half of the northern hemisphere—remain flooded, a substantial amount of carbon will not be released into the atmosphere.
"We do see some breakdown of peat on the surface, but not below 2 feet deep, where the bulk of the carbon is stored," Wilson said.


Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-12-global-tem ... p.html#jCp

Santa may need water skis instead of a sleigh this year.

A weather buoy about 145 kilometres south of the North Pole registered a temperature at the melting point of 0 C early Thursday, as a giant storm east of Greenland drew abnormally warm air northward.

Weather models had predicted temperatures could get this warm and this buoy, part of the North Pole Environmental Observatory, provides validation.

“It seems likely areas very close to or at the North Pole were at the freezing point today (Thursday),” said Zachary Labe, a doctoral student research Arctic climate and weather at the University of California-Irvine.

Data from the buoy show that air temperatures have risen more than 22 degrees in the last two days when they hovered near -24 C which, even then, was above average.



The entire Arctic north of 80 degrees, roughly the size of Canada, has witnessed a sharp temperature spike of nearly 17 degrees.

Consider the average temperature in this large region is around -29 C at this time of year, but had shot up to -14 C on Wednesday and will likely peak at higher number by late Thursday.

Labe said the huge flux of warmth into the region may have contributed to the loss of sea ice at a time when the region is usually gaining ice.

Near the Franz Joseph Islands east of Svalbard, satellite imagery shows a large mass of ice vanishing over the last day. “This is pretty dramatic,” he tweeted.

Data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center indicate the Arctic lost about 148,000 square kilometres of ice in the past day, which is roughly the size of Southern Ontario. Labe cautioned, however, the ice loss data are preliminary and require quality control.


In Longyearbyen, Norway which is on the island of Svalbard in the Nordic Seas, the high reached 2 C Thursday, according to Weather Underground, beating the old daily record of 1 C.

While it is common for large storms to transport large quantities of heat into the high Arctic inducing large temperature swings, the intensity of warmth — more than 22 degrees above normal — has caught the attention of scientists.

This is the second time in the last six weeks such a steep rise in temperatures has occurred. In mid-November, temperatures averaged over the high Arctic were about 17-19 degrees above normal.

An analysis from Climate Central, a non-profit science organization, found that a warm event of comparable intensity to what occurred in November “would have been extremely unlikely in a climate of a century ago” before heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere had grown to current levels.

“If nothing is done to slow climate change, by the time global warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius, events like this winter would become common at the North Pole, happening every few years,” Climate Central concluded.

A similar spike to the present also occurred last year, when a buoy near the North Pole also showed temperatures at the melting point. This sharp rise motivated a study in the journal Nature which concluded the loss of sea ice in the Arctic over time “is making it easier for weather systems to transport this heat polewards.”

While the Arctic witnesses freak temperature rises, the cold air normally positioned there has sloshed southward into Siberia.

Temperatures there have crashed to about 33 degrees below normal, with air temperatures flirting with -50 C.