Wednesday 24th of April 2024

warming up towards misery...

congress

 

The spatial distribution of ocean regions and continents is unevenly arranged across the Earth's surface. In the Northern Hemisphere, the ratio of land to ocean is about 1 to 1.5. The ratio of land to ocean in the Southern Hemisphere is 1 to 4. This greater abundance of ocean surface has some fascinating effects on the environment of the southern half of our planet. For example, climate of Southern Hemisphere locations is often more moderate when compared to similar places in the Northern Hemisphere. 
From http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8o.html 
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Is anthropogenic global warming going to affect the northern hemisphere more than the southern hemisphere? Is there an anthropogenic warming?
These are difficult questions to answer simply. It’s complicated, yet simple — and we can say YES to both questions — as observed. 

First, under the presence of more CO2 in the atmosphere, the surface of the planet is warming up. CO2 is a warming gas under two main specific wavelengths of infrared emission from the sun. It's similar to water being warmed up in a microwave oven, except infrareds have more energy than microwaves... As it warms up, the CO2 warms up the atmosphere. Simple again.

It has been calculated that without any CO2 as a warming gas, the average temperature of the planet would be minus 35 degrees Celsius under present conditions (considering other gases, Milankovitch cycles, natural seasonal variations, etc). The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is thus critical in maintaining, reducing or increasing the temperature at the surface of the planet, overall.

Second, some EXTRA CO2 above the natural maximum level of 300 ppm has been emitted into the atmosphere by human activities, mostly from burning fossil fuels. Since the industrial revolution of the 1850s, humans have pumped more than 120 ppm of CO2 above the maximum recorded natural level. Coal, oil and gas being the main culprits.

The natural CO2 cycle between 180 and 300 ppm is maintained by animal and plant activities, especially photosynthesis (without which we would be cactus) and animal breathing — and ocean absorption of CO2. Presently, these natural conditions CANNOT absorb much of the EXTRA (anthropogenic) CO2, though some of it (uncounted in the atmosphere) has been absorbed by the oceans, turning them "more acidic".

Third, the rule of thumb is that the northern hemisphere will warm up more. First because of its oceans/land ratios and second because it is the largest reservoir of atmospheric CO2 and where most of industrial CO2 emissions have been produced. Though Cape Grim observatory in Tasmania has recorded 400 ppm of CO2, the concentration is highest in the northern part of the planet (on average between 2 and 5 ppm extra). The highest concentration of CO2 is above the Arctic. The Arctic is warming up fast.

GENEVA, May 26 [2014] (Reuters) - Carbon dioxide levels throughout the northern hemisphere hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history in April, an ominous threshold for climate change, the World Meteorological Organization said on Monday. 
The 400 ppm level in the atmosphere, up 40 percent since wide use of fossil fuels began with the Industrial Revolution, is rapidly spreading southwards. First recorded in 2012 in the Arctic, it has since become the norm for the Arctic spring. 

But the "global" warming of the northern hemisphere will not be homogenous, due to climatic zoning and other factors such as continental position and the slowing of the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe generally warmer than Canada on the same latitudes. 
This is likely to create more severe European cold winters while continental summers will be most likely hotter. As well, while the Arctic warms up, a bitter winter cold "vortex" can form south of Canada in winter, in the northern eastern part of the USA. Meanwhile, summer forest fires will break out in Greece, Spain, in California and in Alaska. As the planet warms up, there will be more of this — due to more hotter and drier conditions, while occasional flooding will be severe from sudden storms.

Meanwhile in eastern Australia, despite having been in a La Nina event (cooler humid climes), a massive drought has settled in over the last few years. And it's likely not to improve as we're moving into an El Nino event (warmer dry climes). Bushfires have raged in the last few years as well. The chance of cyclones has gone up, bringing in destructive winds and flooding rain, that usually bypass the drought areas. We are advised today that Sydney might experience a major dust storm this week. 

All these weather events are getting stronger and more frequent under present global warming conditions. One other factor to be taken into account is the zoning of the atmosphere in various convection currents: equatorial, tropical, temperate, polar... These zonings will most likely be disturbed to a point at which the atmosphere will behave chaotically. This point of chaos has been estimated by some scientists to happen by the year 2045. Gus's own prediction is 2032. 

CO2 concentration fluctuates daily, but with an upward trend. Since the 400 ppm threshold was first crossed in 2014 in Hawaii, the highest recorded was 412.60 ppm on May 14, 2018 — 407.31 ppm was recorded on Aug 12, 2018. Roughly 2 to 3 ppm added per annum, despite our (piddly) efforts at reduction of emissions.
Cape Grim first recorded 400 ppm of atmospheric CO2 in 2016. Today it is 404.7 ppm. (328.8 ppm in 1976). The latest greenhouse gas (GHG) data is updated monthly from Cape Grim, one of the cleanest air sources in the world where the observations of other atmospheric warming gases, NOx and methane, have not varied much since 1976.
Meanwhile, emissions of methane, have surged in the northern hemisphere, during the last decade. Scientists have been surprised by the surge, which began around 2007 and was boosted further in 2014 and 2015. Concentrations of methane in the atmosphere over those two years alone rose by more than 20 parts per billion, bringing the total to 1,830ppb (parts per billion). 
Some methane comes from melting permafrost and from melting ice. Some comes from animal husbandry. This is a cause for alarm as methane warms the planet more than 20 times than similar volumes of CO2.

EXTRA emissions of CO2 – the main component of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – have been tapering off slightly, but the emissions are still rising. As the world attempts (not much in Australia unfortunately) to control greenhouse gases, we have somewhat also failed to take account of the rise in methane.

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The southern hemisphere of the planet has the biggest reserve of “cold” in the form of fresh water ice on earth: 61 percent of all fresh water on the Earth is held in the Antarctic ice-sheet — an amount equivalent to about 58 metres of sea-level rise should it all melt — not accounting for water heat-expansion. Can it all melt? Of course. Times have happen before when there was no ice on the surface of the planet. What induced these warmer times? Many factors, including the natural surface carbon equation (CO2 in the atmosphere) being different to that of today. The fossil/geological records show that temperatures were up to 8 degrees above the present in the early Pliocene. Just add this EXTRA 8 degrees Celsius to your present comfort level and feel winters like summer and summers like hell.

Sea level would rise about 6 metres, should the entire Greenland ice-sheet melt. Is the Greenland ice melting? Yes. Mostly in bursts. in July 2012 nearly all of the veneer of surface ice atop the island's massive ice sheet had thawed (this means that the surface was exposed to some quite warm air). This was a record in more than 30 years of satellite observations, according to NASA and university scientists. Presently, the climatic conditions in Greenland are similar (and beyond) to the mini warm period of the early middle ages.

In the last few years, "warm" oceans' influence on glaciers has come to the forefront, as scientists now recognise this as a major—if not the primary—contributor to ice loss in both Greenland and parts of Antarctica. There is an increase in the amount of warm water that many polar glaciers are exposed to. It is as simple as the fact that climate change is causing the oceans to warm, in addition to the outside air, and some of it also involve the complex ways climate change is believed to be affecting atmospheric patterns, winds and ocean currents that carry warm water around the world.

The Arctic sea melt would not change the sea level, as it is (mostly sea) ice already “floating” on the ocean. 
As the ice melts, it cools sea water and cools the atmosphere through aerial convection currents. Thus the full effect of global warming appears to be DELAYED, hidden by the ice melt.
The rule of thumb is that water MINIMUM volume is at 4 degrees Celsius. Ice (frozen water) is about 110 per cent volume of water. Thus ice “floats” and ice will explode full water bottles. Should all the oceans "freeze", the icy sea level would be about 120 metres above present.
Icebergs are freshwater ice, thus float higher on sea water (88 percent submerged) that they would on fresh water (90 percent submerged). This is why a Plimsol line on a ship has two levels of maximum allowed immersion: one for sea water and one for fresh water.
As water warms up (up from 4 degrees Celsius) it expands. Should water cool from 4 degrees Celsius it also expands and at 0 degrees Celsius, it expands 10 per cent and forms ice. The oceans are complex "temperature reservoirs”. 
The surface layer of oceans are warmed up by the sun. There is a boundary layer called the thermocline between 500 and 700 metres deep on average. Below this level the temperature of the water drops sharply.
The average temperature of the ocean surface waters is about 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit). Much of the deep ocean water is between 0-3 degrees Celsius (32-37.5 degrees Fahrenheit).
Researchers looking at corals in the western tropical Pacific Ocean have found records linking a profound shift in the depth of the division between warm surface water and colder, deeper water traceable to recent global warming. Deep diving probes have also indicated major changes to the thermocline temperature gradients, due to global warming.

At the equator, the thermocline is generally 25 to 200 metres (82 to 656 ft.) deep in the equatorial regions and up to 1,000 metres (3,281 ft.) in the subtropics.
The existence of a strong and shallow thermocline in the tropical oceans has important implications for climate. In the equatorial Pacific Ocean, westward surface winds lead to an accumulation of warm surface water in the west, depressing the thermocline there and raising it to near the surface in the east. The shallow thermocline in the east enables cold, nutrient-rich water to be mixed upward into the surface layer. Every few years the thermocline in the eastern equatorial Pacific deepens in association with an El Nino event. The surface temperature of the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean increases, and biological productivity decreases. The warmer surface temperatures associated with El Nino affect atmospheric circulation in the tropics and alter weather patterns throughout the world. 

During the early Pliocene period, between 4.5 and 3 million years ago — the most recent period with global temperatures significantly higher than today — the eastern Pacific thermocline was deep like it is during a modern El Nino event.
So what does this mean? Is the present warming "natural" and in line with the early Pliocene? No. Conditions were different. Under the influence of the so-named "Milankovitch cycles" that measure the rotation/eccentricity of the planet's axis — during the Pliocene, a period of high frequency and low amplitude oscillation in the 41,000-year cycle of Earth's obliquity changed to the low frequency and high amplitude oscillation of the 100,000-year period in the orbital eccentricity — leading to the Pleistocene glacial/interglacial cycles. During the Pliocene, apart from the early years, climate became cooler, drier and seasonal, similar to our modern climates.
The present Milankovitch cycles are more or less neutral on our present climatic conditions, but their trend would lead in the long run to a cooling of the planet, contrarily to the observed sharp warming since the 1850s when we started to burn fossil fuels on an industrial scale, as studied by Arrhenius.
So where to from here? After having studied all the possible agents influencing our climates, anthropogenic CO2 HAS TO BE DECLARED the instigator of the PRESENT warming of the atmosphere. Notably, this warming is going to affect the northern hemisphere more than the southern. This does not mean that we should be complacent because we live in Australia. We have already experienced some warmer dry bubbles in the centre of the continent that indicate the influence of global warming. A few years ago, an extra scale of temperature had to be added above the recorded 49 + degrees Celsius. 
Other factors such as methane are contributing to this warming, while the ice melt is only giving us a false sense of "not warming as much"... This is the ice in the whisky syndrome, slowly warming to room temperature. So. What are we going to do about it? Should we worry about it? 
Of course, we should do all we can AND MORE to reduce our emissions of CO2 to ZERO.
2018, as predicted by Gus on this site in previous comments, was not going to be "our warmest". Yet it still will be the fourth warmest year on record according to the experts. According to Gus, 2019 and 2021 are going to be scorchers under El Nino, as the sun wakes up from its quiet cycle in 2020, should no major volcanic eruption happen and should we have not gone to a full world war about the price of fish, which, in this latter case, would increase the warming several fold. This would be silly.
Global warming nonetheless is going to be worse than we can imagine. ANTHROPOGENIC CO2  is the culprit. We are responsible for it. We should fix it, but not with silly "engineering" using particles... This would upset the problem and make it more "unpredictable". The only solution — and WE HAVE TO BITE THE BULLET — is to reduce our emissions of CO2 to zero immediately. There is already enough anthropogenic CO2 to make our life a misery, soon.

Gus Leonisky
Your local cool zombie...

 

a glorious day at the bitch...

frog

 

see also: 

 

of radiative forcing and global warming...

 

In the world of climate drivers El Nino is the big name. The Bureau of Meteorology has a whole section on its website dedicated to monitoring it, and updates are hotly anticipated. 

Today's update said El Nino was staying at "watch", so there is a 50 per cent chance of an El Nino this season, twice the normal likelihood. 

El Nino is monitored closely because it is associated with dry conditions in eastern Australia, but it is not the only climate driver to be keeping an eye on this year. 

The Southern Annular Mode (SAM) is the teenager of climate drivers — it is temperamental, misunderstood and increasing in strength. 

Earlier this year SAM had a hand in keeping things dry, and now it is tangled up in the westerlies that have been battering the south over the past week.

It even has the potential to team up with El Nino this summer.

 

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-14/southern-annular-mode-and-how-it-a...

 

malcolm's NEGative ideology...

 

 

by Paddy Manning

 

It’s a strange victory for a Liberal prime minister if he needs the support of the Labor Party to claim it, but that’s what Malcolm Turnbull faces on the National Energy Guarantee. Reports after this morning’s joint partyroom meeting suggested that around 10 Coalition MPs expressed reservations [$] about the NEG, and five have reserved their right to cross the floor to vote against it. Given the government’s one-seat majority in the house, there is no way the PM’s signature policy can pass if Labor votes against it.

So the PM and his front bench are conflicted, and it came across in Question Time: a strange mix of shouting at the Opposition’s “ideology and idiocy”, while also begging for their support. Which raises the question: what is in this policy for Labor anymore? If they believe it will help them avoid a non-stop Coalition tongue-lashing over blackouts and power prices and the reintroduction of a carbon tax, they are surely mistaken.

The PM’s big win today, of course, is not over the Opposition but over Tony Abbott and his remaining supporters, whose numbers have finally been exposed on this issue. Turnbull’s kryptonite dealt with. Perhaps it really is the end for Tony Abbott, whom the ABC’s chief political correspondent, Laura Tingle, once described as the most destructive politician of his generation; perhaps he has been revealed as an “empty threat”, as Crikey’s Bernard Keane writes [$] today.

But Turnbull vanquishing Abbott does not help Australia with a climate and energy policy, because the government does not have the numbers to get the NEG through parliament, even if they do manage to persuade the Labor states and territories to support it. The energy ministers are meeting by phone this evening, and will presumably agree to kick the process along, given that no violence was done by the joint partyroom meeting this morning to the policy framework they signed off in principle on Friday. At least in theory, the prime minister’s nudge-nudge wink-wink promise to the diehards in his joint party room to fast-track government intervention to fund new “dispatchable” power remains consistent with the government’s technology-neutral policy.

Unless something dramatic happens tonight, we will finally see draft legislation supporting the NEG. The AFR reports [$] this afternoon that Labor’s plan will be to pass it in the lower house and push to amend it in the Senate.

In Question Time the member for Eden-Monaro, Mike Kelly, opened the attack, pointing to comments by Snowy Hydro chief Paul Broad that a new coal-fired power station would make Snowy 2.0 unviable. The PM dodged that question, trying instead to coal-shame Labor, and he similarly dodged a yes or no question from Bill Shorten on whether he would rule out allocating public money to fund a new coal-fired power station. The PM will not be pinned down, and so the pressure will inevitably ratchet up on the states and territories, and on Labor federally.

At a press conference this afternoon, shadow energy minister Mark Butler did not rule out Labor support for a Senate inquiry into the NEG, which would presumably delay it until after the next election. Butler again insisted that a new coal-fired power station would be uninvestable: “The only way you could deal with the substantial extra cost in building new coal as against new renewable, is with taxpayer finance, and that will go to billions of dollars and then you have to deal with the question of de-risking what investors, bankers and lenders say is a very risky asset, particularly once you get into 2030s and 2040s when there will be a lot of pressure around price risk and regulatory risk.”

In parliament, just after Question Time, Butler accused Turnbull of a “final act of capitulation” to the right wing and a “weak act of surrender”. The fact that Barnaby Joyce was able to support the policy “tells you everything you need to know about it”, he said.

For all the rhetoric, however, and all of the NEG’s faults, Butler has not ruled out Labor support for the policy. As the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, said this afternoon: “Mark Butler was right when he said this was a dud of a policy … the Labor party look like, again, they are walking both sides of the fence. This is a big test for Bill Shorten here. Don’t cave in … You’ve got a choice now, you either back it, or you join the Greens and send this dud of a policy back to the drawing board.” Labor is in the box seat now. In the lead-up to the next election, Labor has a choice of being berated by the Coalition for blocking the NEG, or berated by the Coalition for irresponsible emissions-reduction targets.

Read more:

https://www.themonthly.com.au/today/paddy-manning/2018/14/2018/153422522...

 

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it can't get hotter than this?... you bet it can!...


On yet another day of roasting heat in Phoenix, elderly and homeless people scurry between shards of shade in search of respite at the Marcos De Niza Senior Center. Along with several dozen other institutions in the city, it has been set up as a cooling centre: a free public refuge, with air conditioning, chilled bottled water, boardgames and books. Last summer a record 155 people died in Phoenix from excess heat, and the city is straining to avoid a repeat.

James Sanders, an 83-year-old who goes by King, has lived in the city for 60 years and considers himself acclimatised to the baking south Arizona sun. “It does seem hotter than it used to be, though,” he says as he picks at his lunch, the temperature having climbed to 42C (107F) outside. “Maybe it’s my age. Maybe the wind isn’t blowing. It can’t get much hotter than this though. Can it?”

The heatwave that has recently swept the US has put 100 million Americans under heat warnings; caused power cuts in California where temperatures in places such as Palm Springs approached 50C (122F); and resulted in deaths from New York to the Mexican border, where people smugglers abandoned their clients in the desert. Further north, in Canada, more than 70 people perished in the Montreal area after a record burst of heat.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/aug/14/it-cant-get-much-hotter-c...

 

Read also:

 

of radiative forcing and global warming...

 

and:

 

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33287

scorching the dirt...

The scorching weeks of the summer of 2018 left crops shrivelled and gardens scorched. It has also revealed the lines of scores of archaeological sites across the UK landscape, tracing millennia of human activity, from neolithic cursus monuments laid out more than 5,000 years ago to the outline of a long-demolished Tudor hall and its intended replacement.

Lost sites have been turning up all over Britain and Ireland, ploughed flat at ground level but showing up as parch marks from the air, in areas where grass and crops grow at different heights, or show in different colours, over buried foundations and ditches. A treasure trove of discoveries, including ancient field boundaries, lost villages, burial mounds and military structures, was revealed on Wednesday, recorded during the summer by aerial archaeologists flying over the landscape for Historic England.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/15/millennia-of-human-activ...

too hot for hot lurv...

With temperatures soaring in Colombia, locals in one city may soon need cold showers for more than one reason. They are being told to stay cool by avoiding sex.

Santa Marta is a picturesque coastal city. With summer temperatures rising above 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit), it might seem like the perfect time for some sweaty summer loving, but the city’s health secretary has warned loved-up locals to abstain.

Secretary Julio Salas said that avoiding sex in the midday heat was “logical,” just like people would avoid strenuous exercise in such conditions. “Therefore, it is better to do it at night when the ambient temperature is lower," he said.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/436162-colombians-no-sex-heatwave/

 

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wearing a beige cardigan on a hot day at the beach because mum said so...

... by the time they do, it could be too late...

But by the time they do, it could be too late. Capitalism – especially the dominant Anglo-Saxon variant of capitalism – has trouble thinking beyond the here and now. People running big corporations see their job as maximising profits in the short term, even if that means causing irreparable damage to the world’s ecosystem. What’s more, they think they should be free to get on with maximising profits without any interference from politicians, even though the fight against climate change can only be won if governments show leadership, individually and collectively.

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/16/capitalism-climate...

 

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Read also:

wearing a beige cardigan on a hot day at the beach because mum said so...