Two degrees of warming closer than you may think

by David Spratt

It has taken a hundred years of human-caused greenhouse emissions to push the global temperature up almost one degree Celsius (1C°), so another degree is still some time away. Right? And there seems to have been a "pause" in warming over the last two decades, so getting to 2C° is going to take a good while, and we may have more time that we thought. Yes?

Wrong on both counts.

The world could be 2C° warmer in as little as two decades, according to the leading US climate scientist and "hockey stick" author, Dr Michael E. Mann. Writing in Scientific American in March 2014 (with the maths explained here), Mann says that new calculations "indicate that if the world continues to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, global warming will rise to 2C° by 2036" and to avoid that threshold "nations will have to keep carbon dioxide levels below 405 parts per million", a level we have just about reached already. Mann says the notion of a warming "pause" is false.

Global temperature over the last 1000 years: the "hockey stick"

Here's why 2C° could be just 20 years away.

Record heat

2014 was the hottest year in the instrumental record. The US government agencies NASA and NOAA announced the 2014 record on 16 January, noting that "the 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000".

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) says that since 1880, "Earth’s average surface temperature has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8C°), a trend that is largely driven by the increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other human emissions into the planet’s atmosphere. The majority of that warming has occurred in the past three decades."

GISS Director Gavin Schmidt says that this is “the latest in a series of warm years, in a series of warm decades. While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases".

2014 was also Australia’s third-hottest year on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology: "Overall, 2014 was Australia's third-warmest year on record: the annual national mean temperature was +0.91 °C above average… All States, except the Northern Territory, ranked in the four warmest years on record."

The 2014 record was achieved in neutral ENSO conditions

Fluctuations in the ENSO cycle affect global temperature, with El Niño conditions (a mobile blister of Pacific Ocean heat that affects wind patterns and currents and reduces rainfall in eastern Australia) correlating with warmer global temperatures. Former NASA climate science chief Dr James Hansen and colleagues note that the record global temperature in 2014 "was achieved with little assistance from the tropical ENSO cycle, confirms continuing global warming... and with the help of even a mild El Niño 2015 may be significantly warmer than 2014."

And El Niño conditions are likely to became more frequent with more warming. Last year, Wenju Cai, a climate researcher for Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), warned that the frequency of extreme El Niño events could double with climate change, in a paper that presented "evidence for a doubling in the occurrences in the future in response to greenhouse warming".

There is no "pause" in warming

In releasing the data on 2014's record warmth, NASA charted warming since 1970 and demonstrated that there has been no "pause" or slowing in warming, contrary to the million-times-repeated claims of the climate warming denial industry.

Joe Romm of Climate Progress says this chart (below) shows that: "The human-caused rise in surface air temperatures never paused, never even slowed significantly. And that means we are likely headed toward a period of rapid surface temperature warming. "

A year ago, Prof Matthew England of University of NSW suggested that temperatures were likely to rise quickly:

Scientists have long suspected that extra ocean heat uptake has slowed the rise of global average temperatures, but the mechanism behind the hiatus remained unclear…. But the heat uptake is by no means permanent: when the trade wind strength returns to normal –- as it inevitably will –- our research suggests heat will quickly accumulate in the atmosphere. So global [surface] temperatures look set to rise rapidly….

The oceans are warming very rapidly

Of all the additional heat trapped by higher levels of greenhouse gases, more than 90 per cent goes to warming the oceans, and thus ocean heat content (OHC) is by far the most significant and reliable indicator of global warming. By contrast only two per cent goes to warming the atmosphere, so small heat exchanges between oceans and the atmosphere (caused by changing sea surface, ocean circulation and wind conditions) can have a significant impact on atmospheric temperature, but not on ocean temperature.

The NOAA's State of the Climate for 2014 reports:

During 2014, the globally-averaged sea surface temperature was 1.03°F (0.57°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest among all years in the 1880-2014 record, surpassing the previous records of 1998 and 2003 by 0.09°F (0.05°C).

The rate of OHC incease appears to be accelerating, with Romm noting that:

... ocean warming has sped up, and sea level rise has accelerated more than we thought, and Arctic sea ice has melted much faster than the models expected, as have the great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.

And as Matthew England has told us, when the trade wind strength returns to normal, some ocean heat will quickly accumulate in the atmosphere.

You can check all the NOAA ocean heat content charts here.

Human greenhouse gas emissions are not slowing

Data from the Global Carbon Project shows annual carbon dioxide emissions are continuing to increase, and that the rate of increase since 2000 is at least double that of the 1990-99 decade. Emissions are projected to continue on the current growth path till 2020.

Fossil fuel emissions 1990-2014 and projected to 2019

To summarise the story so far: 2014 was a record hot year (without El Nino conditions); there has been no pause in warming; ocean heat content is rising at an increasing rate; global annual carbon dioxide emissions are continuing to grow; and more frequent El Nino conditions and a return to more normal trade wind strength will release some ocean heat to the atmosphere; so we are likely headed for a period of rapid surface temperature warming.

But there is more to the story.

A reservoir of heat already in the system

Increased levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases create an energy imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation, which is resolved by elements of the earth system (land and oceans) absorbing the additional heat until the system reaches a new balance (equilibrium) at a higher temperature. But that process takes time, due to thermal inertia (as with an electric oven: once energy is applied, it takes time for all the structure to heat up and is not instantaneous). As a rule of thumb, about one-third of the heating potential of an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will be felt straight away, another third take around 30 years, and the last third is not fully realised for a century.

Thus there is more warming to come for the carbon dioxide already emitted, amounting to about another 0.6°C of warming. And because the rate of emissions is increasing, that figure is also increasing.

From this we can conclude that around 1.5°C of warming is locked into the system for current CO2 levels, though very large-scale carbon drawdown could reduce levels slowly over decadal time frames.

As well as long-lived CO2, there are other greenhouse gases with shorter lifetimes, particularly methane (lifetime approx. 10 years) and nitrous oxide (lifetime approx. 100 years). Because emissions of these gases are also continuing unabated, they also contribute to warming temperatures on decadal time frames.

In fact, the current level of greenhouse gases if maintained is already more than enough to produce 2°C of warming over time: in 2008 two scientists, Ramanathan and Feng, in On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system: Formidable challenges ahead found that if greenhouse gases were maintained at their 2005 levels, the inferred warming is 2.4˚C (range 1.4˚C to 4.3˚C).

The current level of greenhouse gases is around 400 parts per million (ppm) CO2, and 470 ppm CO2 equivalent (CO2e) when other greenhouse gases are included. The last time CO2 levels were as high as they are today, humans didn't exist, and over the last 20 million years such levels are associated with major climate transitions. Tripati, Roberts et al. found that, big changes in significant climate system elements such as ice sheets, sea levels and carbon stores are likely to occur for the current level of CO2:

During mid-Miocene climatic optimum [16-14 million years ago] CO2 levels were similar to today, but temperatures were ~3–6°C warmer and sea levels 25 to 40 metres higher than at present… When CO2 levels were last similar to modern values (greater than 350 ppmv to 400 pmv), there was little glacial ice on land, or sea ice in the Arctic, and a marine-based ice mass on Antarctica was not viable…

But the question remains as to how quickly this warming will occur, and for that we need to look at two further factors: climate sensitivity and the role of aerosols.

Climate sensitivity

The measure of how much warming occurs for an increase in greenhouse gases is known as climate sensitivity, and is expressed as the temperature rise resulting from a doubling of greenhouse gas levels.

As Michael E. Mann explains:

Although the earth has experienced exceptional warming over the past century, to estimate how much more will occur we need to know how temperature will respond to the ongoing human-caused rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide. Scientists call this responsiveness “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS). ECS is a common measure of the heating effect of greenhouse gases. It represents the warming at the earth's surface that is expected after the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere doubles and the climate subsequently stabilizes (reaches equilibrium)… The more sensitive the atmosphere is to a rise in CO2, the higher the ECS, and the faster the temperature will rise. ECS is shorthand for the amount of warming expected, given a particular fossil-fuel emissions scenario.

As discussed previously here, some elements of the climate system respond quickly to temperature change, including the amount of water vapour in the air and hence level of cloud cover, sea-level changes due to ocean temperature change, and the extent of sea-ice that floats on the ocean in the polar regions. These changes amplify (increase) the temperature change and are known as short-term or “fast” feedbacks, and it is on this basis that (short-term) ECS is well established as being around 3°C for a doubling of greenhouse gas levels (see, for example, Climate sensitivity, sea level, and atmospheric carbon dioxide).

But there are also longer-term or “slow” feedbacks, which generally take much longer (centuries to thousands of years) to occur. These include changes in large, polar, land-based ice sheets, changes in the carbon cycle (changed efficiency of carbon sinks such as permafrost and methane clathrate stores, as well as biosphere stores such as peat lands and forests), and changes in vegetation coverage and reflectivity (albedo). When these are taken into account, the sensitivity is significantly higher at 4.5°C or more, dependent on the state of the poles and carbon stores. Importantly, the rate of change at present is so fast that some of these long-term feedbacks are being triggered now on short-term timeframes (see Carbon budgets, climate sensitivity and the myth of "burnable carbon").

Mann says uncertainty about ECS can arise from questions of the role of clouds and water vapour, with the most recent IPCC report simply giving a range of 1.5–4.5°C but no "best-fit" figure. Factors such as changing rates of heat flux between oceans and atmosphere (including the El Nino/La Nina cycle), and volcanic eruptions, can cloud the short-term picture, as has the focus on the non-existent "pause".

What would happen if ECS is a bit lower that the "best-fit" value of 3°C of warming for doubling of greenhouse gas levels? Mann explains:

I recently calculated hypothetical future temperatures by plugging different ECS values into a so-called energy balance model, which scientists use to investigate possible climate scenarios. The computer model determines how the average surface temperature responds to changing natural factors, such as volcanoes and the sun, and human factors—greenhouse gases, aerosol pollutants, and so on. (Although climate models have critics, they reflect our best ability to describe how the climate system works, based on physics, chemistry and biology. And they have a proved track record: for example, the actual warming in recent years was accurately predicted by the models decades ago.)

I then instructed the model to project forward under the assumption of business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions. I ran the model again and again, for ECS values ranging from the IPCC's lower bound (1.5°C) to its upper bound (4.5°C). The curves for an ECS of 2.5 degrees and 3°C fit the instrument readings most closely. The curves for a substantially lower ECS did not fit the recent instrumental record at all, reinforcing the notion that they are not realistic.

To my wonder, I found that for an ECS of 3°C, our planet would cross the dangerous warming threshold of 2°C in 2036, only 22 years from now. When I considered the lower ECS value of 2.5°C, the world would cross the threshold in 2046, just 10 years later.

This is charted as:

Michael E. Mann's graph of future temperature for different climate sensitivities. Click to enlarge.

Mann concludes that "even if we accept a lower ECS value, it hardly signals the end of global warming or even a pause. Instead it simply buys us a little bit of time—potentially valuable time—to prevent our planet from crossing the threshold."

As I have explained repeatedly, including in Dangerous climate warming: Myth and reality, 2°C is far from a safe level of warming. In fact, a strong case is made that climate change is already dangerous at less than 1°C of warming and, in James Hansen's analysis, “goals of limiting human made warming to 2°C and CO2 to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster” because significant tipping points – where significant elements of the climate system move from one discrete state to another – will be crossed.

Aerosol's Faustian bargain

Mann also indicated what level of CO2 would be consistent with 2°C of warming:

These findings have implications for what we all must do to prevent disaster. An ECS of 3°C means that if we are to limit global warming to below 2°C forever, we need to keep CO2 concentrations far below twice pre-industrial levels, closer to 450 ppm. Ironically, if the world burns significantly less coal, that would lessen CO2 emissions but also reduce aerosols in the atmosphere that block the sun (such as sulfate particulates), so we would have to limit CO2 to below roughly 405 ppm.

The aerosol question is central but often not well understood. Human activities also influence the greenhouse effect by releasing non-gaseous substances such as aerosols (small particles) into the atmosphere. Aerosols include black-carbon soot, organic carbon, sulphates, nitrates, as well as dust from smoke, manufacturing, windstorms, and other sources.

Aerosols have a net cooling effect because they reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground, and they increase cloud cover. This effect is popularly referred to as ‘global dimming’, because the overall aerosol impact is to reduce, or dim, the sun’s radiation, thus masking some of the effect of the increased greenhouse gas levels. This is of little comfort, however, because aerosols last only about ten days before being washed out of the atmosphere by rain; so we have to keep putting more and more into the air to maintain the temporary cooling effect.

Unfortunately, the principal source of aerosols is the burning of fossil fuels, which causes a rise in CO2 levels and global warming that lasts for many centuries. The dilemma is that if you cut the aerosols, the globe will experience a pulse of warming as their dimming effect is lost; but if you keep pouring aerosols together with CO2 into the air, you cook the planet even more in the long run. A Faustian bargain.

There has been an effort to reduce emissions from some aerosols because they cause acid rain and other forms of pollution. However, in the short term, this is warming the air as well as making it cleaner. As Mann notes above, likely reductions in coal burning in coming decades will reduce aerosol levels and boost warming

Some recent research suggest aerosol cooling is in the range of 0.5–1.2°C over the long run:

• Leon Rotstayn in The Conversation explains that "results from CSIRO climate modelling suggest that the extra warming effect from a decline in aerosols could be about 1°C by the end of the century". 
• Present-day aerosol cooling effect will be strongly reduced by 2030 as more stringent air pollution controls are implemented in Europe and worldwide, and as advanced environmental technologies come on stream. These actions are projected to increase the global temperature by 1°C and temperatures over Europe by up to 2–4°C, depending on the severity of the action. This is one of the main research outcomes of the European Integrated project on Aerosol Cloud Climate and Air Quality Interaction project. 
• In 2011, NASA climate science chief James Hansen and co-authors warned that the cooling impact of aerosols appears to have been underestimated in many climate models and inferred that: "Aerosol climate forcing today is inferred to be −1.6±0.3Wm−2," which is equivalent to a cooling of about 1.2°C. In that case, they wrote, "humanity has made itself a Faustian bargain more dangerous than commonly supposed". 

Conclusion

Michael E. Mann's analysis is sobering, especially when aerosols are accounted for.

The world is already hitting 400 ppm CO2 (the daily average at the measuring station at Mauna Loa first exceeded 400 ppm on 10 May 2013 and currently rising at a rate of approximately 2 ppm/year and accelerating), so the message is very clear that today we have circumstances that can drive us to 2°C of warming, and that emissions from now on are adding to warming above 2°C and towards 3°C or more. This reinforces my conclusion last year that there is no carbon budget left for 2°C of warming, and claims to the contrary are a dangerous illusion.

Mann concludes in not dis-similar terms:

The conclusion that limiting CO2 below 450 ppm will prevent warming beyond 2°C is based on a conservative definition of climate sensitivity that considers only the so-called fast feedbacks in the climate system, such as changes in clouds, water vapor and melting sea ice. Some climate scientists, including James E. Hansen… say we must also consider slower feedbacks such as changes in the continental ice sheets. When these are taken into account, Hansen and others maintain, we need to get back down to the lower level of CO2 that existed during the mid-20th century — about 350 ppm. That would require widespread deployment of expensive “air capture” technology that actively removes CO2 from the atmosphere.

Furthermore, the notion that 2°C of warming is a “safe” limit is subjective. It is based on when most of the globe will be exposed to potentially irreversible climate changes. Yet destructive change has already arrived in some regions. In the Arctic, loss of sea ice and thawing permafrost are wreaking havoc on indigenous peoples and ecosystems. In low-lying island nations, land and freshwater are disappearing because of rising sea levels and erosion. For these regions, current warming, and the further warming (at least 0.5°C) guaranteed by CO2 already emitted, constitutes damaging climate change today.

[Originally posted at Climate Code Red] 

Permafrost thawing could accelerate global warming

"If the permafrost melts entirely, there would be 5x the amount of carbon in the atmosphere than there is now" - Jeff Chanton

Jeff Chanton, the John Widmer
Winchester Professor of
Oceanography at Florida State.

A team of researchers lead by Florida State University have found new evidence that permafrost thawing is releasing large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere via plants, which could accelerate warming trends.

The research is featured in the newest edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“We’ve known for a while now that permafrost is thawing,” said Suzanne Hodgkins, the lead author on the paper and a doctoral student in chemical oceanography at Florida State. “But what we’ve found is that the associated changes in plant community composition in the polar regions could lead to way more carbon being released into the atmosphere as methane.”

Permafrost is soil that is frozen year round and is typically located in polar regions. As the world has gotten slightly warmer, that permafrost is thawing and decomposing, which is producing increased amounts of methane.

Relative to carbon dioxide, methane has a disproportionately large global warming potential. Methane is 33 times more effective at warming the Earth on a mass basis and a century time scale relative to carbon dioxide.

Changes in plant community composition in the polar regions could lead to way more carbon being released into the atmosphere as methane

As the plants break down, they are releasing carbon into the atmosphere. And if the permafrost melts entirely, there would be five times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere than there is now, said Jeff Chanton, the John Widmer Winchester Professor of Oceanography at Florida State.

“The world is getting warmer, and the additional release of gas would only add to our problems,” he said.

Chanton and Hodgkins’ work, “Changes in peat chemistry associated with permafrost thaw increase greenhouse gas production,” was funded by a three-year, $400,000 Department of Energy grant. They traveled to Sweden multiple times to collect soil samples for the study.

The research is a multicontinent effort with researchers from North America, Europe and Australia all contributing to the work.



References

- Permafrost thawing could accelerate global warming - Florida State University news release
http://news.fsu.edu/More-FSU-News/Permafrost-thawing-could-accelerate-global-warming

- Changes in peat chemistry associated with permafrost thaw increase greenhouse gas production

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/02/1314641111

How Do We Act in the Face of Climate Chaos?

Guy McPherson

Guy R. McPherson is Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources
and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at University of Arizona.
Below are some (slighly edited) extracts from a post at Guy
McPherson's website: summary and update on climate change.

The Warning

As described by the United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases in 1990, temperature rise “beyond 1 degree C may elicit rapid, unpredictable and non-linear responses that could lead to extensive ecosystem damage”.

We’ve clearly triggered the types of positive feedbacks the United Nations warned about in 1990. Yet my colleagues and acquaintances think we can and will work our way out of this horrific mess with permaculture (which is not to denigrate permaculture, the principles of which are implemented at the mud hut). Reforestation doesn’t come close to overcoming combustion of fossil fuels, as pointed out in the 30 May 2013 issue of Nature Climate Change. Furthermore, forested ecosystems do not sequester additional carbon dioxide as it increases in the atmosphere, as disappointingly explained in the 6 August 2013 issue of New Phytologist.

Here’s the bottom line: On a planet 4 C hotter than baseline, all we can prepare for is human extinction (from Oliver Tickell’s 2008 synthesis in the Guardian).

John Davies concludes: “The world is probably at the start of a runaway Greenhouse Event which will end most human life on Earth before 2040.” He considers only atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, not the many self-reinforcing feedback loops described below. 

Positive feedbacks

Positive feedbacks

Methane hydrates are bubbling out the Arctic Ocean (Science, March 2010). According to NASA’s CARVE project, these plumes were up to 150 kilometers across as of mid-July 2013. Whereas Malcolm Light’s 9 February 2012 forecast of extinction of all life on Earth by the middle of this century appears premature because his conclusion of exponential methane release during summer 2011 was based on data subsequently revised and smoothed by U.S. government agencies, subsequent information — most notably from NASA’s CARVE project — indicates the grave potential for catastrophic release of methane. Catastrophically rapid release of methane in the Arctic is further supported by Nafeez Ahmed’s thorough analysis in the 5 August 2013 issue of the Guardian as well as Natalia Shakhova’s 29 July 2013 interview with Nick Breeze (note the look of abject despair at the eight-minute mark).

Warm Atlantic water is defrosting the Arctic as it shoots through the Fram Strait (Science, January 2011).

Siberian methane vents have increased in size from less than a meter across in the summer of 2010 to about a kilometer across in 2011 (Tellus, February 2011)

Drought in the Amazon triggered the release of more carbon than the United States in 2010 (Science, February 2011). In addition, ongoing deforestation in the region is driving declines in precipitation at a rate much faster than long thought, as reported in the 19 July 2013 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

Peat in the world’s boreal forests is decomposing at an astonishing rate (Nature Communications, November 2011)

Invasion of tall shrubs warms the soil, hence destabilizes the permafrost (Environmental Research Letters, March 2012)

Greenland ice is darkening (The Cryosphere, June 2012)

Methane is being released from the Antarctic, too (Nature, August 2012). According to a paper in the 24 July 2013 issue of Scientific Reports, melt rate in the Antarctic has caught up to the Arctic.

Russian forest and bog fires are growing (NASA, August 2012), a phenomenon consequently apparent throughout the northern hemisphere (Nature Communications, July 2013). The New York Times reports hotter, drier conditions leading to huge fires in western North America as the “new normal” in their 1 July 2013 issue. A paper in the 22 July 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicates boreal forests are burning at a rate exceeding that of the last 10,000 years.

Cracking of glaciers accelerates in the presence of increased carbon dioxide(Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, October 2012)

The Beaufort Gyre apparently has reversed course (U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, October 2012)

Exposure to sunlight increases bacterial conversion of exposed soil carbon, thus accelerating thawing of the permafrost (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, February 2013)

The microbes have joined the party, too, according to a paper in the 23 February 2013 issue of New Scientist

Summer ice melt in Antarctica is at its highest level in a thousand years: Summer ice in the Antarctic is melting 10 times quicker than it was 600 years ago, with the most rapid melt occurring in the last 50 years (Nature Geoscience, April 2013). Although scientists have long expressed concern about the instability of the West Atlantic Ice Sheet (WAIS), a research paper published in the 28 August 2013 of Nature indicates the East Atlantic Ice Sheet (EAIS) has undergone rapid changes in the past five decades. The latter is the world’s largest ice sheet and was previously thought to be at little risk from climate change. But it has undergone rapid changes in the past five decades, signaling a potential threat to global sea levels. The EAIS holds enough water to raise sea levels more than 50 meters.

Floods in Canada are sending pulses of silty water out through the Mackenzie Delta and into the Beaufort Sea, thus painting brown a wide section of the Arctic Ocean near the Mackenzie Delta brown (NASA, June 2013)

Surface meltwater draining through cracks in an ice sheet can warm the sheet from the inside, softening the ice and letting it flow faster, according to a study accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface (July 2013). It appears a Heinrich Event has been triggered in Greenland. Consider the description of such an event as provided by Robert Scribbler on 8 August 2013:

In a Heinrich Event, the melt forces eventually reach a tipping point. The warmer water has greatly softened the ice sheet. Floods of water flow out beneath the ice. Ice ponds grow into great lakes that may spill out both over top of the ice and underneath it. Large ice damns (sic) may or may not start to form. All through this time ice motion and melt is accelerating. Finally, a major tipping point is reached and in a single large event or ongoing series of such events, a massive surge of water and ice flush outward as the ice sheet enters an entirely chaotic state. Tsunamis of melt water rush out bearing their vast floatillas (sic) of ice burgs (sic), greatly contributing to sea level rise. And that’s when the weather really starts to get nasty. In the case of Greenland, the firing line for such events is the entire North Atlantic and, ultimately the Northern Hemisphere.

Breakdown of the thermohaline conveyor belt is happening in the Antarctic as well as the Arctic, thus leading to melting of Antarctic permafrost (Scientific Reports, July 2013)

Loss of Arctic sea ice is reducing the temperature gradient between the poles and the equator, thus causing the jet stream to slow and meander. One result is the creation of weather blocks such as the recent very high temperatures in Alaska. As aresult, boreal peat dries and catches fire like a coal seam. The resulting soot enters the atmosphere to fall again, coating the ice surface elsewhere, thus reducing albedo and hastening the melting of ice. Each of these individual phenomena has been reported, albeit rarely, but to my knowledge the dots have not been connected beyond this space. The inability or unwillingness of the media to connect two dots is not surprising, and has been routinely reported (recently including here with respect to climate change and wildfires) (July 2013)

Arctic ice is growing darker, hence less reflective (Nature Climate Change, August 2013)

Extreme weather events drive climate change, as reported in the 15 August 2013 issue of Nature (Nature, August 2013)

Ocean acidification leads to release of less dimethyl sulphide (DMS) by plankton. DMS shields Earth from radiation. (Nature Climate Change, online 25 August 2013)

Sea-level rise causes slope collapse, tsunamis, and release of methane, as reported in the September 2013 issue of Geology

Rising ocean temperatures will upset natural cycles of carbon dioxide, nitrogen and phosphorus, hence reducing plankton (Nature Climate Change, September 2013)

Earthquakes trigger methane release, and consequent warming of the planet triggers earthquakes, as reported by Sam Carana at Arctic-news (October 2013)

Arctic drilling was fast-tracked by the Obama administration during the summer of 2012

Supertankers are taking advantage of the slushy Arctic, demonstrating that every catastrophe represents a business opportunity, as pointed out by Professor of journalism Michael I. Niman and picked up by Truthout (ArtVoice, September 2013)

As nearly as I can distinguish, only the latter feedback process is reversible at a temporal scale relevant to our species. Once you pull the tab on the can of beer, there’s no keeping the carbon dioxide from bubbling up and out. These feedbacks are not additive, they are multiplicative. Now that we’ve entered the era of expensive oil, I can’t imagine we’ll voluntarily terminate the process of drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic (or anywhere else). Nor will we willingly forgo a few dollars by failing to take advantage of the long-sought Northwest Passage.

Robin Westenra provides an assessment of these positive feedbacks at Seemorerocks on 14 July 2013. It’s worth a look.

Where we’re going

An increasing number of scientists agree that warming of 4 to 6 C causes a dead planet. And, they go on to say, we’ll be there by 2060. 

Earth-system scientist Clive Hamilton concludes in his April 2013 book Earthmasters that “without [atmospheric sulphates associated with industrial activity] … Earth would be an extra 1.1 C warmer.” In other words, collapse takes us directly to 2 C within a matter of weeks. 

Several other academic scientists have concluded, in the refereed journal literature no less, that the 2 C mark is essentially impossible (for example, see the review paper by Mark New and colleagues published in the 29 November 2010 issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A). 

The German Institute for International and Security Affairs concluded 2 June 2013 that a 2 C rise in global-average temperature is no longer feasible (and Spiegel agrees, finally, in their 7 June 2013 issue), while the ultra-conservative International Energy Agency concludes that, “coal will nearly overtake oil as the dominant energy source by 2017 … without a major shift away from coal, average global temperatures could rise by 6 degrees Celsius by 2050, leading to devastating climate change.” 

Image from: The two epochs of Marcott, by Jos Hagelaars

At the 11:20 mark of this video, climate scientist Paul Beckwith indicates Earth could warm by 6 C within a decade. 

If you think his view is extreme, consider: 

1. the 5 C rise in global-average temperature 55 million years ago during a span of 13 years (reported in the 1 October 2013 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences); and also 
2. the reconstruction of regional and global temperature for the past 11,300 years published in Science in March 2013. One result is shown in the above figure.

How Do We Act in the Face of Climate Chaos?

Below is a video of a recent presentation by Guy McPherson. 

Presentation by Guy McPherson in Boulder, Colorado on October 16, 2013.

Below are some extracts from the video, again slightly edited.

Malcolm Light in 2012 concluded, based on data from NOAA and NASA, that methane release had gone exponential and was leading to the demise of all life on Earth, not just human extinction, by the middle of the century.

So 3.5 C to 4 C is almost certainly a death sentence for all human beings on the planet, not because it'll be a warmer planet, but because the warming of the planet will remove all habitat for human beings. Ultimately we're human animals like other animals, we need habitat to survive.

Changes we see in three or four decades happen as a result of what we do today. There's a huge lag between our actions today in the consequences down the road in terms of the Earth's planetary systems.

Without plankton in the ocean, there goes roughly half the global food supply. The ability to lose land plants is growing rapidly and there goes the other half for the food supply for human beings. If we have up to 5 C by 2050, that'll certainly do the trick.

Why is this happening? It's civilization that drove us into population overshoot. We cannot go back anymore since 1939, since we invented nuclear armageddon. There's no going back. If we ceased the set of living arrangements at this point, the world's 400 or so nuclear power plants melt down catastrophically and we're all dead in a month. We cannot terminate industrial civilization until we decommission all nuclear power plants. It takes at least 20 years to decommission a nuclear power plant.

The bad news is that means that the world's four hundred or so nuclear power plants meltdown catastrophically in a short period of time. Fukushima represent a major threat to humanity. If they fail in moving the spent fuel rods next month, according to nuclear researcher Christina Consola, if one of those MOX fuel rods is exposed to the air, one of the 1565, it will kill 2.89 billion people on the planet in a matter of weeks, so nuclear catastrophe is right there on the horizon. 

People ask me: Why are you presenting this horrible information?

Action is the antidote to despair even if the action is hopeless. When a medical doctor knows that somebody has cancer, it's malpractice if they don't tell that. So I'm doing that. I think Bill McKibben and James Hansen and a whole bunch of climate scientists are guilty of malpractice. Because they know what I know. Almost every politician in the country knows what I know. All the leaders of the big banks know what I know. And they're lying to us.

I'm just presenting the information from other scientists here. I'm trying to the widest extent possible not to infuse my opinion in the situation. It's John Davies who on September 20, 2013, taking into account only carbon dioxide, says there will be few people left on the planet by 2040. It's Malcolm Light, writing in February 2012, who assesses the methane situation. And so on.

Yes, I agree with them, and that agreement is illustrated by me showing you that information.

I promote resistance against this omnicidal culture, not in the hope that it will save our species, but in the hope that it will save other species. Because as E.O. Wilson, biologist at Harvard, points out, it only takes 10 million years after a great extinction event, before you have a blossoming full rich planet again. That's what we're working toward. We're saving habitat for other species at this point.

Colorado flooding, what does the IPCC say?

Flooding in Colorado has caused at least five death. As of 14 September, more than 500 were unaccounted for. Nearly 19,000 homes are damaged or destroyed.

Paul Beckwith comments:

Total destruction. Roads. Homes. Power lines. Water pipelines. Sewer culverts and pipes. And an oil pipeline. Not to mention the lives lost and disrupted forever.

Just be glad that the oil pipeline was not something like Keystone XL or Line 9 or Line 6.

Wake up people. Isn't it ironic that extreme weather events are accelerating in frequency, magnitude, spatial extent, and duration and are due to the very abrupt climate change that is being rapidly worsened from fossil fuel emissions; from burning the very stuff that is carried by the oil pipeline infrastructure.

And politicians are either very stupid or simply slaves to the fossil fuel companies since they ignore all laws protecting the environment, and even rewrite the legal system to eliminate any laws that slow or prevent pipelines, tar sands, fracking and any other fossil fuel infrastructure from being built. While publishing outright lies slamming renewable energy.

No wonder police forces across the world are becoming branches of the military; they realize that the public will soon be furious at the politicians and corporations and government corruption at all levels.

Meanwhile, according to the dailymail leaked IPCC reports say that "Global warming is just HALF what we said". So, what's going on? For starters, it appears that the IPCC has been fooled into ignoring the dangerous situation in the Arctic, i.e. albedo changes, methane and further feedbacks. The cartoon below illustrates this, please comment and share widely! 

Existential risks to our planetary life-support systems

By Andrew Glikson

Figure 1. The future of Earth’s living environment is a non-issue in the current
Australian election - NASA image: Earth rising over the Moon

“We’re simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.”– Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chief climate advisor to the German Government

It is not news that we are over stretching our planetary support systems: we have known for some time. In a 2009 keynote paper in Nature titled “A safe operating space for humanity”, a group of 26 prominent scientists showed three of nine interlinked planetary boundaries – boundaries we must stay within to keep Earth safe – have already been overstepped (see figure 2. below).

Those boundaries include:

• climate change
• biodiversity loss
• the biogeochemical cycles.

Kevin Trenberth, chief scientist of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, states:

“Some of the human-induced changes are occurring 100-times faster than they occur in nature … And this is one of the things that worries me more than climate change itself. It’s actually the rate of change that’s most worrying … Ecosystems are not prepared for this jolt … And neither are many human endeavours, built around assumptions about how hot it’s going to be, how much it’s going to rain on our croplands, and how high the seas will rise.”

Figure 2. Planetary boundaries - the colored star-like area represents the estimated current state and the corners of the red octagon circumscribed by the Earth are the estimated boundaries. Systems whose safe operating space could not yet be determined were left out. Image from: Wikipedia / A safe operating space for humanity, Rockström et al, 2009.

This observation is dramatically demonstrated by the current rise of atmospheric greenhouse gases: this is at an unprecedented rate of 2 to 3 parts per million per year (see figure 3. below). This renders our era – the Anthropocene – a major oxidation event.

Such a growth rate of atmospheric greenhouse gases is extremely rare in geological history. The only analogue is the excavation of billions of tons of carbon from carbonate and shale formation hit by asteroids, such as the K-T impact 65 million years ago and massive global volcanic eruptions.

The consequences for the biosphere – the sixth mass extinction of species – threatens to become a tragedy for human ideals and for nature.

What or who is responsible for the unfolding calamity?

As defined, the Anthropocene is a new geological era triggered by a species which has uniquely mastered ignition. We are using it to excavate and release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon accumulated in Earth’s crust over geological eras into atmosphere.

Once a species masters sources of energy larger by orders of magnitude than its own physiological process (for Homo Sapiens this has been fire, electricity and nuclear fission), the species can hardly be expected to have the wisdom and degree of responsibility to stop its inventions from getting out of control.

Figure 3. Estimates of fossil fuel resources and equivalent atmospheric CO2 levels, including (1) emissions to date;
(2) estimated reserves, and (3) recoverable resources (1 ppm CO2 ~ 2.12 GtC). Hansen, 2012, figure 1; http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120127_CowardsPart1.pdf

Unique among all species, humans adopted fire and combustion as their source of energy and power over nature. Over the last two million years, camped around fires, watching the flames, human imagination has grown to inquire, perceive future possibilities, develop fears, the craving for immortality, and the concept of gods. Fire has imparted a mythological quality to the human mind.

Once a stable climate was established in the Holocene (about 10,000 years ago), allowing cultivation and production of surplus food, this craving for omnipotence and omniscience was expressed by the building of monuments to immortality, the pyramids, as well as endless wars acquiring loot for this purpose.

Spiritual pantheism by pre-historic people such as the Australian Aboriginals has been transformed into admiration of sky gods and monotheism, then into crass materialism and the space cult.

But space exploration has taught us no other planet exists in the solar system on which the conditions exist for advanced life of the type hosted by Earth.

Since the greenhouse effect and its underlying laws of physics and chemistry were decoded in the 19th century, the question has arisen: to what extent will societies and their leaders accept the implications of the science for human industry and human future? Will the scientific method itself and the enlightenment form the basis of future decisions?

In 21st century Australia, the answer has been a resounding “no”.

Government and corporate decisions on climate change are being influenced by misrepresentations of the evidence. What began some 20 years ago as demonstration of solid empirical evidence has deteriorated to media-controlled debate replete with misunderstandings of the basic laws of physics, paleo-climate science, climate science, biological and ecological principles.

Figure 4. Relations between CO2 rise rates and mean global temperature rise rates during warming periods,
including the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, Oligocene, Miocene, late Pliocene, Eemian (glacial termination),
Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, Medieval Warming Period, 1750-2012 and 1975-2012 periods.

A multitude of media outlets and hundreds of websites proliferate notions ignorant of peer-reviewed science. The lesson of numerous attempted debates with those who deny the reality of global warming, or attempt to attribute it to natural non-human factors, is that those entertaining these notions cannot be dissuaded by any amount of scientific evidence.

Climate change misconceptions include claims that:

• temperature rise came before CO2 rise during the glacial terminations and that therefore the current rise of temperature is not the result of CO2 rise. However, the effects of CO2and temperature variations are intertwined. During the last ~400,000 years glacial eras were terminated by periods of intense solar activity, affecting decreased CO2 solubility in warming water and thereby a rise in CO2 levels of the atmosphere. By contrast climate developments since the 18th century, when there was negligible or no rise in solar energy hitting the earth, were triggered by the anthropogenic greenhouse effect of the release of 560 billion tonnes of carbon, consistent with the basic laws of physics.
• global warming is a recovery from the Little Ice Age. However, the Little Ice Age was caused when sunspot activity nearly ceased between 1650 and 1700, depressing global temperatures by 0.2-0.3C relative to preceding periods. By contrast, global warming from about 1975 has tracked toward more than 1.5C over the continents relative to pre-industrial temperatures.
• cosmic rays flux affects warming. However, a dominant solar effect on the climate since 1970 is ruled out by measurements of solar radiation. The incidence of cosmic rays, which oscillate reciprocally with the 11 years sunspot cycle, has been shown to have minor effects on cloud nucleation and has not varied significantly since the mid-20th century.
• carbon dioxide is emitted mainly from volcanoes. However, according to the United States Geological Survey (2012), sub-aerial and sub-marine volcanism emits approximately 150–260 million tons of CO2 a year. Anthropogenic emissions total about 35 billion tons CO2 a year.

Meanwhile, the unthinkable consequences of 4 degrees Celsius and higher temperature rise on the terrestrial atmosphere-ocean system have already begun. We are seeing a series of extreme weather events, reflecting the rise in energy/temperature of the atmosphere-ocean system – the “new normal”.

Andrew Glikson

Does responsibility lie with vested interests and fossil fuel lobbies promoting carbon saturation of the atmosphere? Does it lie with media barons and their mouthpieces hijacking the information systems of democracies, or with cowardly political “leaders” – presiding over extensive demise of future generations? Or does responsibility lie with all of us, with the species?

Deceived by pseudoscientific misconceptions, Homo “sapiens” continues to march toward a cliff, taking much of nature with it.

Earlier published at The Conversation.

The Social Tipping Point

by Paul Beckwith

Abrupt Climate Change is happening today, big time!

Abrupt climate change. It is happening today, big time. The northern hemisphere atmospheric circulation system is doing its own thing, without the guidance of a stable jet stream. The jet stream is fractured into meandering and stuck streaked segments, which are hoovering up water vapor and directing it day after day to unlucky localized regions, depositing months or seasons worth of rain in only a few days, turning these locales into water worlds and trashing all infrastructure like houses, roads, train tracks and pipelines. Creating massive sinkholes and catastrophic landslides. And climate change is only getting warmed up.

In the Arctic methane is coming out of the thawing permafrost. Both on land and under the ocean on the sea floor. The Yedoma permafrost in Siberia is now belching out methane at greatly accelerated rates due to intense warming. The collapsing sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is exposing the open ocean to greatly increased solar absorption and turbulent mixing from wave action due to persistent cyclonic activity. Massive cyclonic activity will trash large portions of the sea ice if positioned to export broken ice via the Fram Strait.

We have lost our stable climate

What does it all mean? There is no new normal? Far from it. We have lost our stable climate. Likely permanently. Rates of change are greatly exceeding anything in the paleorecords. By at least 10x, and more likely >30x. We are heading to a much warmer world. The transition will be brutal for civilization.

Can we avoid this? Stop it? Probably not? At least with climate reality being suppressed by corporations and their government employees. With their relentless push for more and more fossil fuel infrastructure and mining and drilling.

What else can we expect as we negotiate our abrupt transition in climate to a much warmer world?

Craziness, in a nutshell. Temperatures over land surfaces in the far north have been consistently over 25 C for weeks, due to persistent high pressure atmospheric blocks leading to clear skies and unblocked solar exposure. Water temperatures in rivers and streams in the far north have resulted in large fish kills as their ecological mortality thresholds have been exceeded. Many other regions are experiencing strange incidences of animal mortality. Mass migrations of animals towards the poles are occurring on land and sea, at startling rates, in an effort for more hospitable surroundings for survival. Shifting food source distributions is causing even hardier, less vulnerable species to be severely stressed. For example, dolphins are being stranded or dying, birds are dropping out of the sky, and new parasites and bacteria are proliferating with warmer temperatures.

In regions of the world undergoing severe droughts the vegetation and soils are drying and fires are exploding in size, frequency, and severity. Especially hard-hit are large regions of the US southwest, southern Europe, and large swaths of Asia. Who knows if forests that are leveled by fire will eventually be reforested; it all depends on what type of climate establishes in the region.

What about coastal regions around the world and sea levels? Not looking too good for the home team. In 2012 Greenland tossed off about 700 Gt (Gt=billion tons) of sea ice, from both melting and calving. As the ice melts it is darkening from concentrated contaminants being exposed, from much greater areas of low albedo meltwater pools, and from fresh deposits of black carbon ash from northern forest fires. Even more worrying are ominous signs of increasing movement. GPS sensor anchored to the 3 km thick glaciers hundreds of km from the coast are registering increased sliding. Meltwater moulins are chewing through the ice from the surface to the bedrock and are transporting heat downward, softening up the ice bonded to the bedrock and allowing sliding. Eventually, large chunks will slide into the ocean causing tsunamis and abrupt sea level rises. Many regions of the sea floor around Greenland are scarred from enormous calving episodes in the past.

The Social Tipping Point

On a positive note, this knowledge of our changing climate threat is filtering out to greater numbers of the slumbering public that has been brainwashed into lethargy by the protectors of the status quo. As more and more people see the trees dying in their back yards and their cities and houses and roads buckling under unrelenting torrential rains they are awaking to the threat. And there will be a threshold crossed and a tipping point reached in human behavior. An understanding of the reality of the risks we face. And finally global concerted action. To slash emissions. And change our ways. And retool our economies and reset our priorities. And not take our planet for granted.

Paul Beckwith is a part-time professor with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology, department of geography, University of Ottawa. He teaches second year climatology/meteorology. His PhD research topic is “Abrupt climate change in the past and present.” He holds an M.Sc. in laser physics and a B.Eng. in engineering physics and reached the rank of chess master in a previous life.

The above compilation of IPCC and NOAA images is by Peter Carter, who adds the following comment:

I agree. The IPCC in 2007 said: "The concentration of CO2 is now 379 parts per million (ppm) and methane is greater than 1,774 parts per billion (ppb), both very likely much higher than any time in at least 650 kyr (during which CO2 remained between 180 and 300 ppm and methane between 320 and 790 ppb). The recent rate of change is dramatic and unprecedented; increases in CO2 never exceeded 30 ppm in 1 kyr – yet now CO2 has risen by 30 ppm in just the last 17 years."

By definition this is abrupt heating. because atmospheric GHG concentration correlates directly with radiative forcing. CO2 is now 397 ppm and methane is now 1830 ppb ! It follows that the rate of ice being melted will also (as it looks) be unprecedented. The only force we have against mad fossil fuel pushing governments is accountability. They have to be made to face the full terrible consequences of their action on energy and inaction on climate. They are destroying the world.

Methane as high as 2349 ppb

Earth is undergoing one of the largest climate changes in the past 65 million years, Stanford climate scientists Noah Diffenbaugh and Chris Field report, and it's on pace to occur at a rate 10 times faster than any change in that period.

“We know from past changes that ecosystems have responded to a few degrees of global temperature change over thousands of years,” said Diffenbaugh. “But the unprecedented trajectory that we're on now is forcing that change to occur over decades.”

Some of the strongest evidence for how the global climate system responds to high levels of carbon dioxide comes from paleoclimate studies. Fifty-five million years ago, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was elevated to a level comparable to today. The Arctic Ocean did not have ice in the summer, and nearby land was warm enough to support alligators and palm trees. But apart from the rate of change, Diffenbaugh adds, another key difference is that “today there are multiple human stressors that were not present 55 million years ago, such as urbanization and air and water pollution.”

By the end of the century, should the current emissions of greenhouse gases remain unchecked, temperatures over the northern hemisphere will tip 5-6 degrees C warmer than today's averages. In this case, the hottest summer of the last 20 years becomes the new annual norm.

The situation looks to be even more dire than that, argues Sam Carana. In addition to carbon dioxide, there are further pollutants driving global warming. Moreover, as pictured below, feedbacks can dramatically accelerate the rise in temperature locally, particularly in the Arctic.

Image 21. For more details on feedbacks, see extended version of this image and discussion at

arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/diagram-of-doom.html

The level of methane in the atmosphere has already been rising even faster than the level of carbon dioxide, as illustrated by the image below. Moreover, there's the threat that large additional amounts of methane will suddenly be released, in particular from the Arctic seabed.

In August 2013, methane were recorded as high as 2349 ppb, as illustrated by the graph on below (added later, editor), showing that in early August, the world's mean methane level suddenly increased with at least 10 ppb compared to mean levels over the past few months.

To get an idea just how much methane has entered the atmosphere, have a look at the image below, covering several days from the start of August 2013.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

This is further illustrated by the two images below. The image directly below shows where the highest methane levels (i.e. over 1950 ppb, in yellow) were recorded on August 2, 2013.

[ click on image to enlarge ]

The image below shows the presence of methane on August 2, 2013, for a number of ranges, including at levels over 1950 ppb (this time in red).

[ click on image to enlarge ]

The methane threat is further described in the post Methane hydrates, which also features the image below.