Ocean Currents and Accelerated Antarctic Glacial Melting

This has been a well publicized topic in recent news, but thought you might like to view the web page from Cal Tech, as they are behind a lot of the science that is making this happen. Me as a retired engineer, love the simplicity of how they are moving the "robotic ocean gliders" both up and down in the water column, and laterally at the same time, with very little energy being expended....only enough to regulate the buoyancy and move the dive fin positions. And when on the surface, they send all their depth-temperature-position data back to Cal Tech.

So what does this mean for us and Global Warming? Well first we know that the oceans are absorbing at least 90% of the excess solar energy from the Greenhouse Gas Effect and rising greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. And one of the greatest concerns of global warming is sea level rise. So now we have warming oceans, the largest heat sink of global warming, acting directly on the largest "ice sink", Antarctic glaciers, the melting of which is THE greatest threat to cause catastrophic sea level rise.

Perhaps we could build underwater habitats for billions of people at less expense than we could stop emitting trillions of tons of CO2. That would probably be more politically acceptable to our Congress, for reason you no doubt already know.

Climate Change 2014: IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR-5)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Nov 1, 2014 released a new report titled:

Climate Change 2014

Synthesis Report

It is available in 2 versions: a shorter version of 40 pages for policy makers, and a longer version of 116 pages. Both can be accessed HERE.

Even the shorter version for policymakers is very technical (but I am sure our policymakers have good technical people on their staff). Also many referenced figures are not yet included, and every page has a disclaimer at the bottom saying, "Subject to copy editing and layout".

Even so, there is a vast amount of current information on climate change prepared by some of the world's most qualified scientists. I will begin a series of posts on this subject by quoting a few highlights, then in subsequent posts I will focus on the oceans involvement, as I will be doing a class on The World's Oceans and Climate Change for Osher Lifelong Learning (Lewes, DE) in the spring of 2015.

Following are two paragraphs from page 3 of the 40 page summary for policy makers:

1.1 Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.

Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth’s surface than any preceding decade since 1850. The period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years in the Northern Hemisphere, where such assessment is possible (medium confidence). The globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data as calculated by a linear trend, show a warming of 0.8 [0.65 to 1.06] °C over the period 1880 to 2012, when multiple independently produced data sets exist.

The pause in global warming...Real??? and if so Why???

My sense has been that the increased heat input to Earth due to increased greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the oceans, and thus caused a temporary pause in land surface temperature rise.

And that may be correct, but here from expert climatologist Dr. Richard Muller of Berkeley, is a more detailed analysis,  A Pause, Not an End, to Warming   (click top link to NY Times article, plus also please explore Berkeley Earth, as we will be exploring it in our upcoming class).

IPCC Latest Report - Washingtpn Post Blog perspective

Five things you must know about the IPCC report, from the mouths of very smart people  is a blog post published by The Capital Weather Gang, and author Jason Samenow. I chose this article about the IPCC report because it samples the thoughts of many highly educated individuals. It also provides a nice perspective how IPCC confidence has steadily increased since their first report in 1990, that human caused emissions are the cause of observed global warming.

So now what will the World do to address carbon emissions, and the effects of inevitable climate changes???

The Continent-Size Canary

"Trust me, matey...it is getting hotter down under." Bill Fintel photo

Measuring global warming, if it is occurring, is a task burdened with highly variable data, and hence frequently questioned results. So through the eyes of National Geographic, lets take a look at Australia, "the continent-size Canary".

The rough-hewn sandstone buildings perched atop Observatory Hill have been keeping an eye on Sydney Harbor since 1858. They've pretty much seen it all—from the installation of the city's first gaslights to the construction of the now iconic Sydney Opera House and Harbor Bridge.

But at 2:55 p.m. on January 18, 2013, meteorological equipment in the observatory registered something new: a read-out marking the hottest day in the city's history: 45.8°C (114.4°F). (Note this link takes you to the current month, to see Jan data, select the month of Jan 2013.)

Much of the continent was languishing in the grip of a heat wave that would break 123 heat and flood-related records in 90 days—among them, the hottest summer on record and the hottest seven consecutive days ever recorded.

Now why the Canary analogy? Because of a very nice scientific phrase, called "signal to noise ratio".

The anomaly stood out. Numbers like those break through what climate scientists like David Jones, manager of climate monitoring prediction at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, call the "signal to noise" ratio.

"One of the first places on the planet where the global warming signal is easy to discern is actually Australia, because of this low temperature variability," Jones said. "And that's exactly what we're seeing. The Australian warming trend is very clearly apparent in our records. It pops out quite quickly from the background noise of weather patterns."

I think my next line of research will be to see how the Australia wine growing regions are faring.

Plants as Temperature Sensors

Okay, thermometers as sensors of global temperature have many deficiencies. They are not deployed widely enough to adequately average in regional variations, such as over the oceans (70% of the Earth's surface area). They also have a questionable input relative to "large city heat effects".

So what could be better? Well, if you have been following this blog, you know I favor sea level rise sensors. As the Earth warms, land based ice melts and sea levels rise. And yes, sea levels are rising. For all my sea level blog posts, or for just NOAA Data (and scroll down to sea level data).

BUT on to plants, millions and millions of them, all across the sparsely inhabited high latitudes of our northern hemisphere. How are they doing? In a nutshell, they are mostly prospering through warmer temperatures, and more rain fall. Just take a look at this latest NASA release.

Now for a NY Times blog post by Andrew Revkin, a concerned climate news reporter whom I admire a great deal. I would say he takes a more optimistic approach to the new NASA study by looking at plants adapting...and I hope he is right.

1.6 Billion data points say Earth is warming

According to Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California,  "Global warming is real and greenhouse-gas emissions from human activity are the main cause."

What adds to the impact of this quote is that Richard Muller was once a serious global warming skeptic. To help him resolve the question of whether the Earth is really warming, he organized a small group of dedicated researchers to study all scientific Earth temperature data......in all 1.6 billion data points.

Richard is no longer a skeptic. He now firmly believes the Earth is warming because of human emissions, primarily CO2. For very concisely presented details on his group's study, see  BerkeleyEarth.org

Is Global Warming Really Happening?

"Trenberth, who shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change, said for most of the last century record high and low temperatures were about even. So far this year, there have be 15,055 record highs, but only 1,343 record lows. That ratio of about 11 to 1, Trenberth said, is some of the clearest evidence yet of climate change." (full article)

I certainly agree that the evidence is becoming irrefutable, unless you are an Ostrich with your head buried in the sand, which by the way, they do not do. 

For an in depth perspective from NASA Earth Observatory describing the recent Derecho storm that left millions without power, see  Derecho Strikes the Eastern US and Power Outages in Washington DC Area. Most climatologists think that the severity of this storm was increased due to global warming. Not a proven point, but as more severe storms occur, the evidence mounts.

CO2 and Post Ice Age Global Temperatures - New Data

One difficult to explain relationship when looking back at geologic history, has been that following ice ages, data seemed to show global temperature increasing before atmospheric CO2 levels increased. It turns out that this data was all for the Antarctic region, and now when scientists look at true global temperatures (based on proxy measurements derived from fossil records at 80 locations around the globe), CO2 does rise before global temperatures rise. This of course is far more in line with the the expected cause and effect of CO2, a greenhouse gas, and global temperature.

After having read several articles about this recent work, the one by Jonathan Amos of the BBC was selected as the title link because it gives a more detailed explanation of all the factors involved. An oversimplified summary would be that: as the the Earth's wobble changed so that the northern hemisphere received more sunlight, the vast ice sheets began to melt. Fresh water from them slowed down the Atlantic overturning circulation (ocean conveyor). This trapped more heat near the equator and southern hemisphere, which in turn contributed to an increase in CO2 release from the deep waters of the southern oceans. And finally, the increase in CO2 levels, from about 180 ppm to 260 ppm, increased the rate of global warming. Here we are today at about 390 ppm CO2 and rising.

How Warm Will Earth Get?

Bottom line, if, or should I say when, Earth's CO2 concentration doubles, the expected warming will be about 3 degrees C. See the linked Washington Post blog of Ezra Klein for the sources of this figure, as well as an excellent summary of the mechanisms behind global warming.

These sources, from recent climate data, to climate models, to paleoclimate data, also indicate that the range of expected temperature increase is anywhere from 1 deg C .........to 8.5 deg C.

Earth Has Warmed 1.8 deg F Since 1950

"Richard Muller, a noted Berkeley physicist who’s been a strident critic of climate campaigners, has released a much-anticipated new package of studies....You can find Muller’s materials at Berkeleyearth.org.....The core finding is that temperatures over the continents have warmed about 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1950.."