Spring Global Warming Update

“I’m not ready for this. Not this early…”*

Louisiana: New Climate Refugees As Waters Close In

Only 15 miles south of New Orleans, the waters around Grand Island, Barataria,  Crown Pointe, and Jean Lafitte are continuing to rise, threatening long time residents of the bayou area.  About a football field worth of wetland disappears every two hours.

South Africa: Over 400 dead in “unprecedented” flooding:

Horrendous rains have brought lethal flooding and landslides that have displaced thousands the Durban, South Africa region. The humanitarian disaster, as always, is magnified by malfeasance on the part of the powers what is. More than a decade ago, poor families were relocated away from a new soccer stadium and dumped in a flood prone area, where they remain. Damages are currently estimated at $684 million and rising. The death toll will climb. 

Bering Sea: Warming Ocean Threatens Crab Fisheries

Add Alaskan snow crab to the growing list of marine animals  threatened by rapidly changing conditions on the ground, or, in this case, in the Bering Sea. Extreme ocean warming in the area around the Pribilof Islands  (between Siberia and Alaska) has crashed the population down nearly 90% from 2021 levels. Read the Article.

Siberia/Alaska: Methane / Permafrost Thaw Reshapes the Arctic

There is a lot of CH4 trapped beneath the surface of the planet, particularly under the permafrost in Siberia, Alaska and other Arctic regions. As the permafrost thaws, the gases trapped below it spew into the atmosphere, creating a climate feedback cycle with results that are observable in something close to real time. Visit the Page.

The Poles: Insane Temps At Both Poles

Late winter in the Arctic temperatures were about 70°F above the normal average at some measurement stations. Some near North Pole stations reported the beginning of melt. New heat records were also established in Antarctica with temperatures of over 50°F above the normal average in March. Visit the Page.

Great Barrier Reef: New Mass Bleaching Event

Another widespread die-off at the World Heritage site off the northern coast of Australia marks the sixth such catastrophe since 1998. This ongoing environmental disaster is driven by warming oceans and pollution. The most recent aerial survey shows almost no reefs across a 1,200km stretch unaffected by the elevated water temperatures.  See Australia’s New Normal video.

Great Salt Lake: Toxic Dust Events Loom In Utah

The inland sea that forms the iconic core of Utah’s Latter Day culture is in danger of disappearing as it reaches its lowest level. About half of the original lakebed area is now dry land  In the process, thousands of square miles of dry lake bed is exposed, laying open vast expanses of toxic dust.

India: Record Deadly Heat Begins The Year

Life-threatening heat waves are shattering temperature records, with highs reaching over 100°F. High temperatures are expected to climb to 10°F to 15°F above normal. 

Antarctica: Another Major Ice Shelf Collapse

East Antarctica’s Conger ice shelf – a floating platform the size of Rome – broke off the continent on March 15, 2022.

American West: Mega Drought Driving Water Emergencies

Lake Mead has dropped to an unprecedented low and other regional reservoirs have reached emergency levels as the western drought continues. Hydropower is likely to be curtailed and blackouts are expected. Read the Article.

Afghanistan: 5 Million Children At Risk of Starvation As Crops Fail In Historic Drought

Five million children near are starvation in Afghanistan amid the worst drought since records began. “When there is no rain the land is dry and we can’t grow anything … The drought has completely devastated our land.”

*Flagstaff, AZ resident watching her neighborhood go up in smoke, quoted April 21, 2022 in the New York Times.

Bordeaux: Wine Regions Scramble As Heat Threatens Grapes

Violent weather events—frost, hail, storms, rain at harvest, dry summers—have become more frequent. Slow to acknowledge the creeping disaster, French wine authorities have authorized planting of new varieties. 

Iceland: Land Mass Rising As Huge Glaciers Melt Away

Coastal water levels are dropping even as melting land glaciers dump tons of fresh water into the North Atlantic. As the immense weight of Iceland’s glacial ice mass disappears into the North Atlantic, the land beneath it is “bouncing back”, more or less springing up as the burden is removed. So seas seem to be dropping lower on the coasts of Iceland even though water level is relative to the land mass. Read the Article.

Australia: The Relentless Onslaught of the New Normal

The reality of calamitous sea level rise smashes into Sidney as tidal onslaught tears boats their moorings. Bondi and Clovelly beach clubs and hotels took a pounding from huge wind driven swells. The second major cleanup follows a major flooding event only three weeks ago.  It’s all part of Australia’s New Normal (see our video). 

Syria: Lethal Drought Continues Into Third Decade

The root cause of the so war in Syria was an unrelenting drought that brought farmers to their knees. It moves into its third decade as the worst in the Middle East for at least 1,000 years. Conditions have worsened in the past two years: Herds have been culled and crops are generally devastated. The iconic Khabur river is at record lows.. 

Argentina: Wildfires & Serial Heat Waves

After a scorching heatwave, Argentina is suffering another round  of raging wildfires that torched forests and farms across its northern regionAuthorities estimate early losses at a quarter billion dollars with 2 million acres torched. The region has been experiencing record heat this year, baking in unprecedented temperatures up to 113°F.

Kenya: Water Shortages, Dead Livestock and Ruined Harvests as Desertification Moves In

Kenya and the Horn of Africa are in the third year of failed rainy seasons as the desert takes back the land. 5.5 million children in the region are threatened by acute malnutrition. Millions of head of livestock have died of malnutrition and in Kenya, Forecasts indicate that below average rainfall will continue into the foreseeable future.

Brazil: Mass Rainforest Ecocide

The far right Brazilian administration has accelerated the plundering of indigenous lands; what environmental regulations remain are essentially gone. Many scientists now believe the critical forest carbon sink has crossed the final tipping point in terms of climate effects. When forests are cleared, another climate feedback cycle is triggered. 

Sahel: Sahara Moving South To Claim Central Africa

Life-threatening heat waves are shattering temperature records, with highs reaching over 100°F. High temperatures are expected to climb to 10°F to 15°F above normal. 

Indonesia: Papua’s Last Glacier Almost Gone

Little remains of the ironically named Eternity Glacier in Papua’s Jayawijaya mountains. The once might ice formation is expected to be gone by 2025.

Gulf Stream: AMOC continues to slow

The Gulf Stream carries warmer waters north, where they serve to moderate the climate of northern Europe. Look at the latitude of Western Europe and you will see how far north the nations that invaded North America are located compared to the US east coast. The global ocean current is driven by salinity changes in the northern sea, which causes surface waters to change density and sink (that’s basically how it works). When this mechanical process is disrupted, weather becomes unpredictable and extreme, extended events more common.

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WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT

 

New research reveals that polar ice is melting from below, as two scary scenarios unfold.

Ice shelves: These hybrid formations hug the coasts of Greenland and Antarctica, with part of the shelf floating and part on land. They serve to put the brakes on the flow of massive land glaciers into the sea. They are collapsing virtually everywhere, most notably the Thwaites Glacier (otherwise known as the Doomsday glacier) and the Pine Island ice shelf. It has slowly become clear that the warming waters beneath the shelves is accelerating the melt rate, with cascading effects.

Land ice sheets melting from the foundation up: What is not obvious, however, is the behavior of trillions of tons of land ice, as billions of gallons of meltwater from the surface of the ice sheets flows down to the base of the mass. Falling meltwater is converted to kinetic energy as it flows downward, which heats the pools forming at the foundation of the ice sheet. This invisible process is accelerating at unprecedented rates.  The meltwater also behaves as a lubricant that increases ice flow as well as the quantity of ice discharged into the ocean.

The Antarctic ice sheet averages one mile thick and contains about 30% of the planet’s fresh water. It is already responsible for about 4% of sea level rise around the world.

Simply put, if this ice (not to mention more trillions of tons on the Greenland land mass) continue to accelerate into the Southern Ocean, the effect on coastal sea level rise will be catastrophic. Equally catastrophic will be the change in the ocean’s basic chemistry as more fresh water is added.

Fun Fact: the Twaites Glacier is about the size of Great Britain. The rate of melt has doubled in the past two decades.

00:18 BOULDER, CO SUDDEN WINTER FIRESTORM [Dec 30] Fast moving fires took Colorado by surprise, driving people from their homes with no notice. Fanned by 110 MPH winds and extended drought, the Marshall fire is now was the most destructive in the state’s history. Four of the top five worst wildfires occurred between 2018 and 2021.

00:30 DRAMATIC LIGHTING STRIKE INCREASE IN THE ARCTIC The region around the North Pole (north of 80° latitude) recorded 7,278 lightning hits in 2021, double the number of hits recording for the previous nine years COMBINED. This phenomenon is all the more alarming because this type of weather was rare in the Arctic due to lack of heat convection. Average temperatures in the Arctic are increasing a rate 3 times that of the rest of the planet.

1:57 OCEANS CONTINUED TO ABSORB RECORD AMOUNTS OF HEAT AND CO2: The Earth’s oceans have been absorbing the excess heat created by greenhouse gas emissions for an estimated 20 years. The steady warming is generating today’s extreme weather events such as hurricanes, which intensify much more quickly. the oceans warming eight times faster since the late 1980s than in the three previous decades. According to new 2022 research, extreme heat in the global ocean passed the “point of no return” in 2014.

2:36 THE DOOMSDAY GLACIER The Thwaites Ice Shelf – otherwise known as the Doomsday Glacier  – has become more and more unstable in recent years, along with the Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica. These “glaciers” are actually ice shelves, a hybrid coastal formation with one end on the land and the other floating in the warming seas.  Ice shelves are a critical feature of both the Arctic and Antarctic because they act as plugs on the trillions of tons of land ice as it moves toward the seas.

The Antarctic ice sheet averages one mile thick and contains about 30% of the planet’s fresh water. It is already responsible for about 4% of sea level rise around the world.

Simply put, if this ice (not to mention more trillions of tons on the Greenland land mass) continue to accelerate into the Southern Ocean, the effect on coastal sea level rise will be catastrophic. Equally catastrophic will be the change in the ocean’s basic chemistry as more fresh water is added.

Fun Fact: the Twaites Glacier is about the size of Great Britain. The rate of melt has doubled in the past two decades.

3:04 RECORD GERMAN FLASH FLOODS In the Rhineland (July 2021) and surrounding countries dealt Germany its costliest natural disaster of all time. The estimated $40 billion in damages far exceeded insurance coverage, which will only pay out on about 25% of the losses. The nation was starkly unprepared for the onslaught of torrential rains, with more than 220 people killed.

3:16 TOXIC SEAWEED INVADES CARIBBEAN Call it seaweed, call it algae, Sargassum has invaded the beaches of the Caribbean Sea in increasing quantities for about a decade. While it is not a new phenomenon, warming waters are driving larger and larger blooms, which are not clogging beaches with sulfurous piles of rotting Sargassum. Insects are attracted to the brown piles, but tourists most definitely are not. The water borne little shop of horrors fouls nets and propeller and kills marine animals such as turtles and dolphins. At one point, Barbadoes declared a national emergency.

3:17 SEA LEAVEL RISE FLORIDA While the focus is generally on the high value high risk coastal properties in Miami & environs, the incursions of salt water inland has begun. The canal infrastructure built to drain high tides and flood water back into the Atlantic are failing because the ocean is now higher than the land the canals are supposed to drain. Following Tropic Storm Eta, floodwaters remained in parts of Broward County for weeks. Said one resident:

“It was pretty scary. I stepped out of house into ankle-deep water. It came three-fourths up the driveway. I’d never seen the water that high. It was scary because I didn’t know if it was going to continue to rise.”