Climate change means geoengineering under pressure to keep our CO2 budgets under control

By Malcolm Sutton
Posted about 4 hours ago

Stalled weather patterns will get bigger due to climate change
Relationship between jet stream, atmospheric blocking events
Date:
November 13, 2019
Source:
Rice University
Summary:
Climate change will increase the size of stalled high-pressure systems that can cause heat waves, droughts and other extreme weather, according to a new study.

Climate change will increase the size of stalled high-pressure weather systems called "blocking events" that have already produced some of the 21st century's deadliest heat waves, according to a Rice University study.

Former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney to serve as UN special envoy on climate


Carney drew international acclaim during his 5 years as Canada's top central banker

Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who previously served as Canada's top central banker, will be taking on a new role as the United Nations' special envoy on climate action and climate finance.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres made the announcement while speaking to reporters in Madrid on Sunday, adding the move will take effect next year.

The power of earthworm poop and how it could influence climate change

'They could have as much of an impact as, let's say, wildfire,' according to expert

David Burke · CBC News · Posted: Dec 26, 2019 6:00 AM AT | Last Updated: 10 hours ago

There’s an old saying that “the proof is in the pudding,” meaning that you can only truly gauge the quality of something once it’s been put to a test. Such is the case with climate models: mathematical computer simulations of the various factors that interact to affect Earth’s climate, such as our atmosphere, ocean, ice, land surface and the Sun.

For decades, people have legitimately wondered how well climate models perform in predicting future climate conditions. Based on solid physics and the best understanding of the Earth system available, they skillfully reproduce observed data. Nevertheless, they have a wide response to increasing carbon dioxide levels, and many uncertainties remain in the details. The hallmark of good science, however, is the ability to make testable predictions, and climate models have been making predictions since the 1970s. How reliable have they been?

Now a new evaluation of global climate models used to project Earth’s future global average surface temperatures over the past half-century answers that question: most of the models have been quite accurate.

Fallible wrote:Its “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”, ffs...

2019 was Australia's hottest year on record – 1.5C above average temperature
Bureau of Meteorology data shows average temperature record across the country beat previous high of 2013

Global warming could temporarily hit 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time between now and 2023, according to a long-term forecast by the Met Office.

Meteorologists said there was a 10% chance of a year in which the average temperature rise exceeds 1.5C, which is the lowest of the two Paris agreement targets set for the end of the century.

Levels of a powerful greenhouse gas jumped again last year, continuing a surge in the past few years that researchers still cannot fully explain.

Atmospheric concentrations of methane climbed by 10.77 parts per billion in 2018, the second highest annual increase in the past two decades, according to provisional data released recently by US agency NOAA.

Methane is a shorter-lived but much more powerful greenhouse than carbon dioxide. The amount finding its way from human and natural sources, which can include everything from oil and gas wells to wetlands, has been rising since 2007. The rate has accelerated in the past four years.

Researchers warned earlier this year that if methane levels keep increasing at current rates then the Paris climate deal’s goals – of limiting global warming to 2°C and pursuing efforts to keep below 1.5°C – would be very difficult to meet.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/22 ... z6Apqkpg6C

Global Warming Is Pushing Arctic Toward ‘Unprecedented State,’ Research Shows
Rising temperatures are triggering cascading effects across the polar region, from diminishing ice to changes in when plants flower and where wildlife is found.

Global warming is transforming the Arctic, and the changes have rippled so widely that the entire biophysical system is shifting toward an "unprecedented state," an international team of researchers concludes in a new analysis of nearly 50 years of temperature readings and changes across the ecosystems.

Arctic forests are turning into bogs as permafrost melts beneath their roots. The icy surface that reflects the sun's radiation back into space is darkening and sea ice cover is declining. Warmth and moisture trapped by greenhouse gases are pumping up the water cycle, swelling rivers that carry more sediment and nutrients to the sea, which can change ocean chemistry and affect the coastal marine food chain. And those are just a few of the changes.

The researchers describe how warming in the Arctic, which is heating up 2.4 times faster than the Northern Hemisphere average, is triggering a cascade of changes in everything from when plants flower to where fish and other animal populations can be found.

Together, the changes documented in the study suggest the effects on the region are more profound than previously understood.

How anchoring a ship to an ice floe will help fight climate change
Mosaic, a year-long Arctic mission aims to answer fundamental questions about global warming

Macdoc wrote:Australia all ready there.

Macdoc wrote:My apologies that was supposed to be 1.5 above not 1.2 ....Australia all ready there.

2019 was Australia's hottest year on record – 1.5C above average temperature
Bureau of Meteorology data shows average temperature record across the country beat previous high of 2013

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... emperature

Met for the first time anticipates a global year above 1.5 C in its 5 year forecast.

Global warming could temporarily hit 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time between now and 2023, according to a long-term forecast by the Met Office.

Meteorologists said there was a 10% chance of a year in which the average temperature rise exceeds 1.5C, which is the lowest of the two Paris agreement targets set for the end of the century.

Macdoc wrote:it's NOT going be 2040 when it crosses the 1.5 threshold in a non El Nino year globally.

Macdoc wrote:One of the major issues is if methane release in the northern continents and ocean verges has now charted its own course.

Levels of a powerful greenhouse gas jumped again last year, continuing a surge in the past few years that researchers still cannot fully explain.

Atmospheric concentrations of methane climbed by 10.77 parts per billion in 2018, the second highest annual increase in the past two decades, according to provisional data released recently by US agency NOAA.

Methane is a shorter-lived but much more powerful greenhouse than carbon dioxide. The amount finding its way from human and natural sources, which can include everything from oil and gas wells to wetlands, has been rising since 2007. The rate has accelerated in the past four years.

Researchers warned earlier this year that if methane levels keep increasing at current rates then the Paris climate deal’s goals – of limiting global warming to 2°C and pursuing efforts to keep below 1.5°C – would be very difficult to meet.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/22 ... z6Apqkpg6C

a known unknown but makes rose coloured projections of relying on 30 year trends rather moot.

The 1.5 was of course an electric prod that was never realistic....at this point neither is 2C 80 years out barring some serious CO2 removal.

Thawing permafrost could wake ‘sleeping giant’ of more greenhouse gases, potentially derailing global climate goals.

30 APRIL 2019
Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release
The sudden collapse of thawing soils in the Arctic might double the warming from greenhouse gases released from tundra, warn Merritt R. Turetsky and colleagues.

This much is clear: the Arctic is warming fast, and frozen soils are starting to thaw, often for the first time in thousands of years. But how this happens is as murky as the mud that oozes from permafrost when ice melts.

As the temperature of the ground rises above freezing, microorganisms break down organic matter in the soil. Greenhouse gases — including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — are released into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming. Soils in the permafrost region hold twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does — almost 1,600 billion tonnes1.

What fraction of that will decompose? Will it be released suddenly, or seep out slowly? We need to find out.

Current models of greenhouse-gas release and climate assume that permafrost thaws gradually from the surface downwards. Deeper layers of organic matter are exposed over decades or even centuries, and some models are beginning to track these slow changes.

But models are ignoring an even more troubling problem. Frozen soil doesn’t just lock up carbon — it physically holds the landscape together. Across the Arctic and Boreal regions, permafrost is collapsing suddenly as pockets of ice within it melt. Instead of a few centimetres of soil thawing each year, several metres of soil can become destabilized within days or weeks. The land can sink and be inundated by swelling lakes and wetlands.

Abrupt thawing of permafrost is dramatic to watch. Returning to field sites in Alaska, for example, we often find that lands that were forested a year ago are now covered with lakes2. Rivers that once ran clear are thick with sediment. Hillsides can liquefy, sometimes taking sensitive scientific equipment with them.

Every week dozens of metal flasks arrive at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, each one loaded with air from a distant corner of the world. Research chemist Ed Dlugokencky and his colleagues in the Global Monitoring Division catalog the canisters and then use a series of high-precision tools—a gas chromatograph, a flame ionization detector, sophisticated software—to measure how much carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane each flask contains.

These air samples—collected at observatories in Hawaii, Alaska, American Samoa, and Antarctica, and from tall towers, small aircraft, and volunteers on every continent—have been coming to Boulder for more than four decades, as part of one of the world’s longest-running greenhouse gas monitoring programs. The air in the flasks shows that the concentration of methane in the atmosphere had been steadily rising since 1983, before leveling off around 2000. “And then, boom, look at how it changes here,” Dlugokencky says, pointing at a graph on his computer screen. “This is really an abrupt change in the global methane budget, starting around 2007.”

The amount of methane in the atmosphere has been increasing ever since. And nobody really knows why. What’s more, no one saw it coming. Methane levels have been climbing more steeply than climate experts anticipated, to a degree “so unexpected that it was not considered in pathway models preparatory to the Paris Agreement,” as Dlugokencky and several coauthors noted in a recently published paper.

There is a consistent pattern in the IPCC of presenting detailed, quantified (numerical) complex-modelling results, but then briefly noting more severe possibilities—such as feedbacks that the models do not account for—in a descriptive, non-quantified form. Sea levels, polar ice sheets and some carbon-cycle feedbacks are three examples. Because policymakers and the media are often drawn to headline numbers, this approach results in less attention being given to the most devastating, high-end, non-linear and difficult-to-quantify outcomes.

Twelve years ago, Oppenheimer and co-authors pointed out that consensus around numerical results can result in an understatement of the risks:

The emphasis on consensus in IPCC reports has put the spotlight on expected outcomes, which then become anchored via numerical estimates in the minds of policymakers…it is now equally important that policymakers understand the more extreme possibilities that consensus may exclude or downplay…given the anchoring that inevitably occurs around numerical values, the basis for quantitative uncertainty estimates provided must be broadened.

The air in the flasks shows that the concentration of methane in the atmosphere had been steadily rising since 1983, before leveling off around 2000. “And then, boom, look at how it changes here,” Dlugokencky says, pointing at a graph on his computer screen. “This is really an abrupt change in the global methane budget, starting around 2007.”

Every year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration releases an Arctic Report Card, detailing the state of the frozen world at the top of the globe.

And each year, its findings grow more dire. This year, the report revealed that the Arctic itself may now be contributing to climate change.

That’s because Arctic soil contains a lot of carbon, which would stay there if the planet wasn’t warming. As the frozen ground across the Arctic starts to thaw, it releases that carbon, which turns into a greenhouse gas. Some of that carbon gets taken up by plants growing in the summertime, but more and more of it is now escaping into the atmosphere.

“Thawing permafrost throughout the Arctic could be releasing an estimated 300-600 million tons of net carbon per year to the atmosphere,” the NOAA writes in the report. That’s roughly the equivalent of Japan’s annual emissions.

And those emissions are going to increase. “We think that should be two to three times bigger by the end of the century based on the kind of forecasting we’ve done,” Ted Schuur, an ecologist and the author of the report’s section on permafrost, said.