2021 Atlantic Hurricane Season Fast Facts (msn.com)
Climate Impact Research 6th Aug 2021 Collapse of the Atlantic circulation weakening
A massive Atlantic Ocean current system, which affects climate, sea levels
and weather systems around the world, may be about to be fatally disrupted.
A new report in the journal Nature Climate Change describes how a series of Atlantic Ocean currents have reached “an almost complete loss of stability over the last century” as the planet continues to warm.
The report, authored by Dr. Niklas Boers, specifically analyzes data on ocean temperature and salinity to demonstrate that their circulation has weakened over the past few decades. If current trends continue unabated, they may slow to a dangerous level or even shut down entirely. Potsdam Institute Predicts Imminent Gulf Stream Collapse, Widespread Cooling – Watts Up With That?
The series of currents in question is known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC for short. The current system is sometimes likened to a series of conveyor belts: one “belt” flows north with warm water that, upon reaching the northern Atlantic, cools and evaporates, in the process increasing the salinity of water in that region. The saltier water becomes colder and heavier, sinking and flowing south to create a second “belt.”
Those two currents are in turn connected by other oceanic features in the Southern Ocean, the Labrador Sea and the Nordic Sea.
Ocean current system seems to be approaching a tipping point (phys.org)
The study reinforces earlier scientific studies which found the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation system to be at its weakest in 1,600 years.
Gulf Stream is at its weakest for over 1,000 YEARS due to climate change – BloomNews
This so-called conveyor belt system has been in place for thousands of years or more, and ocean life is adapted to its rhythms. Indeed, AMOC, which scientists believe can slow down or turn off abruptly when temperatures increase, is also vital to maintaining humanity’s way of life. If it shuts down, temperature will plummet in Europe while the number of storms increases; changing weather conditions will lead to food shortages in South America, India and Western Africa.
Rising sea levels along the North American eastern seaboard will force millions to flee their homes. Considering that AMOC is already starting to decline, this is a serious threat that could radically alter our planet in a matter of mere decades. “This decline may be associated with an almost complete loss of stability over the course of the last century, and the AMOC could be close to a critical transition to its weak circulation mode,” the analysis explains.
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This is not the first troubling news which has emerged about AMOC.
In February another study disclosed that AMOC could be weakened by
34% to 45% by the end of the century as Arctic ice and the Greenland Ice Sheet continue to melt. The new report, however, increases the growing sense of scientific alarm about AMOC’s integrity.
“This work provides provides additional support for our earlier work in the same journal Nature Climate Change suggesting that a climate change-induced slowdown of the ocean ‘conveyor belt’ circulation already underway, decades ahead of schedule, yet another reminder that uncertainty is not our friend,”
Dr. Michael E. Mann, at Penn State University, wrote to Salon.
“There are surprises in store, and they are likely to be unpleasant ones,
when it comes to the climate crisis.”
Cristian Proistosescu, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign who studies climate dynamics and global warming consequences, was more measured in his assessment. “If the worst-case scenario comes to pass — and that’s a big if — we can certainly expect to see dramatic changes in climate in the far north of Europe,” Proistosescu told Salon by email. He described a world in which Scandinavian winters are no longer mild, where precipitation patterns shift as far south as central Africa and in which other meteorological patterns alter radically.
The worst case scenarios may be “somewhat unlikely,” he added, noting that the majority of updated climate models predict a gradual deterioration over the 21st century rather than an abrupt showdown. “The data we have is too short to say with any real confidence whether the collapse of the North Atlantic Overturning Circulation is truly imminent,” Proistosescu concluded.
“The question for me is how risk-averse we should be in the face of uncertainty, and how much do we want to avoid a high cost–low probability worst-case scenario? Given how high the costs would be, we should be fairly risk averse.”
Not every climate expert is impressed with the new study’s conclusions.
Kevin Trenberth, part of the Climate Analysis Section at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, told Salon by email that the new report is
“a bunch of total BS. They do not refer to any of our publications about the Atlantic and what is going on there and they get it all wrong.” He added that based on “the best and longer[st] record than they have, the N[orth] Atlantic
is dominated by natural variability and they can not say anything about the longer term changes.”
American atmospheric scientist Ken Caldeira also warned against overstating the situation with AMOC. He wrote to Salon that “it should also be noted that paleo-climate data indicates that a shut-down of the North Atlantic circulation may have more widespread consequences than is predicted by the climate models.” The problem is that even our most sophisticated climate models do not contain enough details to be able to anticipate with certainty what is going to happen in our climate system.
Like Proistosescu, Caldeira urged erring on the side of being safe.
“In this case, uncertainty means risk, and, because effects of our CO2 emissions are effectively irreversible, this risk should motivate a high
degree of caution,” he concluded.
2021 Atlantic Hurricane Season Fast Facts (msn.com)
Scientists say limiting methane could seal our fate on climate change.
By Rachel Ramirez, CNN
Slashing carbon dioxide emissions is critical to ending the climate crisis.
But, for the first time, the UN climate change report emphasized the need to control a more insidious culprit: methane, an invisible, odorless gas with more than 80 times more warming power in the near-term than carbon dioxide.
According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the concentration of methane in the atmosphere is higher now than any time in at least 800,000 years. With Earth rapidly approaching the 1.5-degree-Celsius threshold above pre industrial levels, scientists say methane emissions need to be reduced fast. Charles Koven, a lead author of the IPCC report, said this is due to methane’s incredible warming power.
“The fastest way that we might mitigate some of the climate change that we’re seeing already in the short term is by reducing methane,” Koven told CNN.
“If we were to reduce methane emissions, it would act to offset one of these sources of warming.” If the world stopped emitting carbon dioxide tomorrow, Koven said, global temperatures wouldn’t begin to cool for many years because of how long the gas stays in the atmosphere. Reducing methane is the easiest knob to turn to change the path of global temperature in the next 10 years, he said.
Methane, the main component of the natural gas we use to fuel our stoves
and heat our homes, can be produced in nature by belching volcanoes and decomposing plant matter. But it is also pumped into the atmosphere in much larger amounts by landfills, livestock and the oil and gas industry. Natural gas has been hailed as a “bridge fuel” that would transition the US to renewable energy because it is more efficient than coal and emits less carbon dioxide when burned. Importantly for industry, natural gas is in abundant supply around the world and is less costly to extract from the ground.
But proponents for this new “cleaner” gas missed a dangerous threat: that it could leak, unburned, into the atmosphere and cause significant warming.
Methane can leak from oil and natural gas wells, natural gas pipelines and the processing equipment itself. According to data from the US Energy Information Administration, the US has thousands of active wells for natural gas, millions of abandoned oil and gas wells, about two million miles of natural gas pipelines, and several refineries that process the gas.
One in three Americans lives in a county with oil and gas operations, posing climate and public health risks, according to a report by the Environmental Defense Fund. Until recently, tracking the location and magnitude of methane leaks was difficult. Now, infrared cameras and advanced satellites can estimate methane emissions around the globe, giving scientists and regulators insight into what’s being released from facilities.
Climatologists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration previously told CNN that pernicious changes in the climate system will only intensify unless people stop using fuels that burn and leak greenhouse gases like methane. “For carbon dioxide, we’ve always known about power plants and smokestacks and things like that; but with methane, until recent years, we didn’t understand how much of an influence a small number of large sources have really had,” Robert Jackson, professor of environmental science at Stanford University, told CNN.
Robert Jackson | Environmental Forum – May 10, 2012
“We didn’t understand how long the tail was and how important the super-emitters were for reducing emissions.” The latest IPCC assessment highlights that scientists now have a better understanding of how much methane is being released by human activity like agriculture and the fossil fuel industry, and how much it contributes to the climate crisis.
Around the world, fossil fuels, agriculture and coal mining are skyrocketing methane emissions. Nonetheless, the production and sources vary by region.
In North America, a majority — 14% of total methane emissions — come from oil and gas production followed by livestock at 10%. In China, coal mining is the biggest methane driver, contributing 24% to total emissions.
Though agriculture is a major source of methane, Jackson said the emissions from farming and food production would be harder to tackle. “There are only certain things we can do with cattle,” Jackson said. “We can either ask people to stop eating beef or we can try and give cattle feed additives to change the microbes in the chemistry of their guts. But that’s not easy to do for billions of cattle around the world.”
The International Energy Agency estimates that the oil and gas industry around the world can reduce methane by 75% using the technology already available. It also estimates that 40% of the emissions could be reduced without extra costs, since the natural gas captured could then be sold.
Climate activists like Lisa DeVille, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, are urging policymakers to make stringent methane reductions. The Bakken oil field in North Dakota surrounds the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, where DeVille lives, with nearly 1,000 oil and gas wells that scientists found in 2016 was leaking 275,000 tons of methane per year.
“This means the land is part of my identity as an Indigenous woman has
been turned into a pollution-filled industrial zone,” DeVille said. “This is unacceptable.” As the co-founder of the grassroots group Fort Berthold Protectors of Water and Earth Rights, DeVille is tackling environmental regulations head-on. In 2018, the organization successfully sued the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management for rolling back a critical methane waste prevention rule.
Global temperatures are now at 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, according to the report, and the planet is already seeing the impact in the form of extreme fire behavior, severe flooding, relentless drought and deadly heat waves. The IPCC report makes clear that stopping methane emissions is key to slowing the planet from reaching 1.5 degrees. Scientists say world leaders need to act immediately in tackling all greenhouse gas emissions, and not just carbon dioxide.
Democrats could REPLACE Joe Biden with John Kerry as presidential candidate, claims former White House official (the-sun.com)
Rick Duke, senior director and White House liaison for John Kerry.
President Biden’s special climate envoy, told CNN in a press call that reducing methane, and methane leaks, is a top priority for the Biden administration.
“There’s been an incredible largely behind-the-scenes effort already to prepare to move faster and more comprehensively to cut methane domestically, at the same time that we’re addressing this as a diplomatic imperative,” Duke said.
Already, pressure is mounting.
In June, DeVille discussed tribal issues, particularly slashing methane emissions and transitioning to clean energy quickly and equitably, with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan.
“What we do in the next few years will determine what kind of world we have, what kind of world we leave for our children,” said DeVille, who is now seeking to meet with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to discuss similar issues.
“We must rapidly switch to clean energy, stop fossil fuel carbon pollution,
and then methane leaks.”
Loving the life I was given is all I have control of. By not taking life so seriously and actually enjoying the short time we all have here with respect for all.
Firefighters on the march: The Pine Gulch Fire:
smoke of which is shown here, was started by a lightning strike on July 31, 2020, approximately 18 miles north of Grand Junction, Colorado. According to InciWeb, as of August 27, 2020, the Pine Gulch Fire became the largest wildfire in Colorado State history, surpassing the Hayman Fire that burned near Colorado Springs in the summer of 2002. (Bureau of Land Management-Colorado, via InciWeb and National Interagency Fire Center) Download Image
August 2020 will be remembered for its extreme heat and violent weather:
The U.S. endured heat waves, hurricanes, a devastating derecho and raging wildfires out West. Meteorological summer — June through August’s end — was a standout: It ranked 4th hottest and in the driest one-third of all summers in the historical record.
Here are more highlights from NOAA’s latest monthly U.S. climate report:
Climate by the numbers.
August 2020
The average temperature for August across the contiguous U.S. was 74.7 degrees F (2.6 degrees above the 20th-century average) and ranked third-hottest August on record.
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah each had their warmest August on record. In particular, Phoenix, Arizona, had its hottest month ever recorded, with an average temperature of 99.1 degrees F.
Also on August 16, Death Valley in California reported a high temperature of 130 degrees F. If verified, this temperature would be the hottest August temperature on record for the U.S.
The average August precipitation for the contiguous U.S. was 2.35 inches (0.27 of an inch below average), which put the month in the driest third of the 126-year record.
Arizona, Nebraska and Utah ranked driest on record for August, while New Mexico and Iowa ranked second and third driest on record, respectively.
Year to date & meteorological summer.
The average U.S. temperature for the year to date (YTD, January through August) was 56.3 degrees F, 2.4 degrees above the 20th-century average. It ended as the 7th-warmest in the YTD record.
The contiguous U.S. has seen 21.64 inches of precipitation for the YTD (0.93 of an inch above the long-term average), placing it in the wettest third of record.
For meteorological summer (June through August), the average temperature for the contiguous U.S. was 73.6 degrees F — 2.2 degrees above the average. Summer 2020 ended with the ranking of 4th-hottest summer on record.
The precipitation total for summer was 7.99 inches (0.33 of an inch below average), which ranked in the driest third of the record.
An annotated map of the United States showing notable climate and weather events that occurred across the country during August and Summer 2020. For text details, please visit http://bit.ly/USClimate202008.Download Image
More notable climate and extreme events!!
Two Atlantic hurricanes made landfall.
Hurricane Isaias struck North Carolina on August 4 and quickly accelerated up the East Coast, bringing widespread damage and power outages across New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Hurricane Laura made landfall on August 27 in southwest Louisiana with 150-mph winds. Laura tied the 1856 Louisiana hurricane for having the strongest land-falling winds on record for the state.
Wildfires blazed. Numerous wildfires burned hundreds of thousands of acres across the West. Lightning from unusual summer thunderstorms sparked the second-,third-, and fourth-largest fires on record in California, while the Pine Gulch Fire, near Grand Junction, Colorado, became the state’s largest wildfire in state history.
A devastating derecho swept through. On August 10, a line of severe thunderstorms with widespread winds of more than 100 mph, known as a derecho, raced 700 miles across the central U.S. from Iowa to Ohio and brought significant damage to crops and infrastructure.
More > Access NOAA’s August U.S. climate report and download the images.
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