Unlikely climate refugees as Brienz, Switzerland is evacuated

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

Massive rockslide threatening village as alpine “ice glue” melts

TWO MILLION CUBIC YARDS OF ROCK AND DIRT are about to crash down on the village of Brienz in Switzerland’s eastern Alps. The town’s remaining inhabitants have been evacuated in anticipation of the imminent collapse, which is predicted for the next week or so. Authorities had considered construction of a retaining wall to protect the village, but the project was rejected based on calculations that the structure would have to be over 225 feet* high.

Although this is a relatively minor, localized event (unless you live in Brienz) it is a sample of a larger physical destabilization of mountain regions around the world. Just as rapid permafrost thaw is compromising the very foundation of Arctic infrastructure, the heating of the planet’s alpine regions is dissolving crevasse ice that is the very “glue” that holds the mountaintops together. Geologists have measured stunning temperature increases as deep as 20 ft into the rock, with an uptick of around 1°F over the past decade.

With mountain structure weakened, the increase in extreme storms magnifies and accelerates the process of breaking down the slopes, further threatening lives and property.

This impending disaster will be another example of a troubling trend gaining traction in the upper altitudes of the planet, driven by the effects of global warming.

In particular, the spectacular phenomenon known as Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF) has emerged as a dramatic threat to alpine populations and infrastructure. New lakes form as glaciers melt more quickly behind natural moraine dams, eventually breaching the earthen barrier, or in many cases, destroying it in a violent outburst. When this happens, huge quantities of water rush downhill, sweeping away everything in their path. According to a study in Nature magazine, GLOF events threaten upwards of 15 million people globally. Since 1990, the number of glacial lakes has increased by over 50%.  

This pattern in turn is a component of the longer term predictions for South Asia’s “Third Pole” which will have a long term adverse effect on fresh water supplies over a vast area in Asia. Also known as High Mountains Asia, the extensive mountain ranges in this region provide fresh water for over a billion people. This crisis is currently masked by the fact that meltwater is actually creating more and larger glacier lakes, which provide a temporary benefit of the more water available for humans and agriculture.

The growth of these lakes brings an ever increasing risk of floods, both in the form of GLOF and also less dramatic events.

However, when this phase of the cycle is over (10 years?), the glaciers will be gone, and the billions downstream will be in dire straits. This process will manifest itself unevenly, with regions in the south experiencing large scale water shortages in the near future. This region is warming about twice the global rates, with increases estimated at .8°F per decade.

 

 

Wildfires burn 1 million acres near Alberta’s Tar Sands

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

 State of Emergency as record heat waves and fires sweep Tar Sands area.

 

A 92°F temperature reading does not immediately leap off the page (compared to for example, the 104°F temperatures baking Western Europe) until you look at its location 550 miles north of the US border; then ponder the fact that it’s only mid-May. Record heat and tinderbox conditions are continuing this week in Alberta’s oil patch, otherwise known as the Tar Sands. 30,000 citizens have been evacuated in a weather pattern scenario similar to the lethal 2019 runaway fires in Australia. Dozens of heat records have been broken in the past week.

Ironically, in 2016 Fort McMurray was ravaged by a firestorm known as the Beast, a now forgotten mega disaster from which the city has not fully recovered. That evacuation involved 80,000 people.

The role this horror-show extraction site plays in creating these conditions is almost literary in its irony. The local environmental devastation wreaked by the Tar Sands is well documented, including poisoning of fresh water supplies, destruction of wetlands and irresponsible disposal of mining waste. The Athabasca River Basin and its inhabitants will never recover.

On a larger scale, this massive strip mining operation is the source of the dirty crude bitumen that has caused permanent damage in large scale pipeline spills, including 1 million gallons spewed into the Kalamazoo River in 2010 from the Enbridge pipeline.

Remember that? Didn’t think so.

The current fire and heat disaster around Ft. McMurray has cut as much as 5% of Canada’s oil production, which is a dirty shame.

Literally, a dirty shame.

 

Spain hits 104°F as water supplies evaporate

The summer climate disaster season has already begin in Western Europe, as temperatures set new records across the region n and extreme drought continues.

Catalonia’s 7.7 million residents in the northeast of Spain have already endured 32 months of drought, with reservoirs now running dry. Without serious rainfall, the area will enter a drought emergency in the Fall.

Temperatures also skyrocketed across parts of Portugal, Morocco and Algeria in the last week of April.

Turkmenistan methane emissions described as mind boggling 

Satellite images show stunning methane leaks from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields.  The data produced by Kayrros for the Guardian leaked 2.6m tonnes of methane in 2022, with the eastern field emitting 1.8m tonnes. The CH4 leaks are estimated to be equivalent to 366m tonnes of CO2, more than the UK’s annual emissions. Methane is anywhere from 25 to 30 times  more powerful as a greenhouse gas than CO2.

Sudden ocean warming seems to accelerate glacier collapse in Greenland

Northwest Greenland’s Peterman glacier is melting far more rapidly than previously thought, which will increase the rate of sea level rise, which will increase the rate of glacier melt. The new study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at NASA and the University of California Irvine. As ocean tides become rapidly warmer, the ice shelves that hold back land ice melt faster.

Spike In Global Ocean Temps Point To Tough Years Ahead

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

Global ocean temperatures have spiked dangerously in the past month and a half

Enter El Niño

Sorry to distract from the $250,000,000 Royal Coronation but it is worth noting global ocean temperatures have spiked dangerously in the past month and a half. Scientists are calling the ongoing increase in global ocean temperatures “unprecedented,” as a new unexplained anomaly produces graphs that are way out of the norm. (See graph)

Known as the OISST (Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature) the current report is comprised of data collated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)  satellites and buoys. The report charts record breaking temperatures skating far higher than any previous year. This is truly a much more serious problem than seems obvious at first, for several reasons.

  • The first is that the ocean may well have reached its limit for absorbing excess atmospheric heat.
  • The second is that El Nino seem to be returning.
  • The third is that warmer oceans mean expanding ocean volume, which also contributes to sea level rise.

Ocean heat saturation

The ocean has been absorbing excess heat from global warming for decades, but all evidence now points to this process being at an end. And that means air and ground temperatures are poised for bad things to happen to humans.  Let’s be clear, the global climate catastrophe is much much further along than most people understand. This includes joe citizen who understands that this is a “real” problem, but things someone will take care of it before it’ s too late. Maybe Elon Musk or George Soros.

The big El Niño thing

This is simple and scary: the Pacific has been in an extended  La Niña cycle, which is a natural cyclical phenomenon that tends to cool the planet. In spite of that, the last eight years have been the warmest on record. So in a sense, La Niña has been disguising the meta effects of global warming. But that’s about to be over.

It bears rephrasing: Even with a cooling cycle in place for the past eight years, the planet has continued to set global records for average atmospheric temperatures.

Expanding ocean volume: sea levels

News reports tend to focus on polar ice melting as a contributor because it is an obvious cause and effect scenario.

But thermal expansion of trillions and trillions of gallons of sea water in the planet’s oceans actually contributes more to sea level rise as the waters heat up. It’s basic physics: every substance swells (increases it’s volume) when heated. There is nothing that is going to turn this around anytime soon.

 

Australia Mass Fish Kill Follows Deadly Heat and Flooding Cycle

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

Millions of Fish Deprived of Oxygen In NSW Disaster

Millions of fish washed up dead and stinking in the  southeastern the New South Wales outback about 400 miles from Sydney. The mass die-off was caused by a combination of oxygen deprived flood waters and an extended heat wave.  

The contaminated water is adjacent to the pumping station in the town of Menindee. 

This mass die-off is the latest in a pattern of events reported on the Darling-Baaka River in recent weeks, including one in late February. An extended drought, punctuated by catastrophic flooding also caused mass kills in 2018 and 2019. 

 

 

 

 

 

Megadrought fires in Chile driven by record temps and wind

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

CHILE: DEVASTATION SECOND ONLY TO “THE FIRESTORM YEAR”

Extreme heat and an ongoing megadrought are spawning lethal fires in the middle and south of Chile. The fires have torched more than 1,000 sq. miles ((667,000 acres) and killed dozens of people. Satellites show vast plumes of smoke drifting out over the Pacific. As of Feb 5 there were 275 fires.

Temperatures in the Central Valley have been sustained at record levels of 104°F, driven by strong winds, exacerbating an extended drought that made the past decade the warmest and driest in the region’s history.  The megadrought is responsible for an ongoing water crisis as well.

The region is home to Chile’s forest plantations, which contribute to the available fuel for the fires. So far, this fire season is second only to 2017 in terms of acres burned: the 2017 season is known as the fire storm year. As of early February, scientists are estimating 4 million tons of CO2 have been spewed into the atmosphere.

 

MUDSLIDES KILL 36 IN PERU

Torrential rains have caused lethal mudslides in Peru, with damage made worse by mining practices in the region.

NEW ZEALAND SMASHED BY FLASH FLOODS

Like many many places around the planet, Auckland, NZ is poorly prepared to face what is coming, some of which arrived spectacularly beginning Jan 27. Record rainfall brought a summer’s worth of rain in a three day onslaught, driving lethal flooding, major infrastructure damage, power and water outages and evacuations

 

Drought-Driven Somalia/Ethiopia Starvation

Millions of people in Somalia, Ethiopia and the greater Horn of Africa are on the verge of starvation. The country is bracing for its second famine since 2011 and many predict it will be worse than the last. A two-year drought has devastated crops leaving herders without food to feed their animals.

 

Auckland, NZ Smashed by unprecedented three day weather event

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

Unprecedented: Auckland’s record storms kill at least four

A summer’s worth of rain.

Like many many places around the planet, Auckland, NZ is poorly prepared to face what is coming, some of which arrived spectacularly beginning Jan 27. Record rainfall brought a summer’s worth of rain in a three day onslaught, driving lethal flooding, major infrastructure damage, power and water outages and evacuations.

As is the case everywhere, New Zealand is experiencing more violent weather events due to the warming atmosphere’s ability to hold more moisture and generate more destructive energy.

 

French Water Wars Reflect Global Trends:

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

Police guarding water infrastructure assets as civilians rebel

The American West and Middle East are not the only places water wars are becoming increasingly urgent and violent. In France (not a country one thinks of as water challenged) gendarmes are guarding water supplies as water use stakeholders face off in the face of fast changing conditions. As the country reels in the aftermath of a record summer heat wave – a season of wild fires and shrinking rivers – authorities are attempting to construct massive reservoirs to retain water specifically for the commercial agriculture industry. This is not sitting well with taxpayers who are funding the projects, who claim the reservoirs are tantamount to illegal privatization and benefit a select few of wasteful industrial farms.

In Nouvelle-Aquitaine, thousands of activists protesting a new “mega basin” reservoir confronted military police armed with tear gas. The protesters ripped out pipelines used to feed the system.

Environmentalists are also displeased, citing the consequences of diverting this quantity of water from ecosystems.

Whatever the merits of these respective positions, they reflect similar events and conditions around the planet, from the American West, Egypt, the Middle East and Africa. Elsewhere, smaller scale vandalism and civil disobedience episodes are multiplying as citizens resist water restrictions regulations. Water is being stolen from resort Jacuzzis, fire departments and cemeteries.

Activists or saboteurs, concerned citizens or criminals, these scenarios are now a daily occurrence around the world.

“In the morning you go gunning for the man who stole your water”

Saudi Arabia Tapping In Arizona Aquifer

Lobbyists aided mass transfer of water overseas

 Some wells are beginning to run dry as massive, foreign-owned mega farms are “legally” sucking up water in Arizona’s La Paz County and using it to grow alfalfa and other cattle feed crops. The feed is then shipped overseas as fodder for livestock in the Middle East. The farms are paying rock bottom prices as local wells and aquifers show the effects of over pumping. While it is illegal to divert water out of state, it is not against the obsolete water regulations to ship the crops grown with the water.

Zimbabwe Hydro Levels At Record Lows

Main power planet shuts down as larger crisis looms

Power generation has been shut down at Kariba Dam, the largest hydro project in souther Africa. The Zimbabwe Power Company has used up it’s 2022 water allocation as water levels at the station drop to record lows. The dam generates 70% of the power for Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Saltwater Moving Into R. Euphrates

Drought & dams changing fertile crescent

Saltwater from the Persian Gulf is invading the delta of the Euphrates River as the river continues to dry up . The calamity is the result of extended drought and political battles both within Iraq and with Turkey. In addition to poisoning livestock, the brackish water is making farming in the “fertile crescent” impossible. Farmers in the once thriving region are selling their herds and moving into cities, another group of under the radar climate refugees.

 

A Treat To Beat Your Feet in the Mississippi Dust

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

Midwestern Drought Drives Record River Levels

The ongoing Midwestern drought has reduced the mighty Mississippi to a trickle of its usual self, causing serious disruption to one of the country’s primary shipping routes. The key Memphis river gauge showed a record low of -10.81 ft, with other meters across the region confirming the trend.

Barge traffic has dwindled significantly as cargo levels have been reduced, allowing the boats to ride higher in the water. Critical commodities such as corn, soybeans, wheat, coal and oil move through this essential corridor. The iconic waterway drains about 41% of the country.

The remnants of Hurricane Roslyn provided some temporary relief, but the dry pattern is expected to continue throughout the winter.

 

Methane levels continue to rise

Atmospheric levels of the three main greenhouse gases warming our planet – carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide- all reached new record highs in 2021, according to a new report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

 

Famine grows

It isn’t just the climate change driven drought, the price of artificial fertilizer is making agriculture more challenging than ever in poorer nations.

 

Most coal burning utilities are contaminating groundwater

A new study, released on Thursday by Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity Project, looked at 292 sites around the country, from the desert outside Las Vegas to the coast of Massachusetts. The source is coal ash, a toxic byproduct of burning coal. And according to this article in Grist, about half of them have no plans to do anything about it. Because they are coal burning utilities. 

 

Wells run dry in the southwest due to drought and abuse

Big international agriculture firms are stealing water from local aquifers in Arizona and other southwestern states to grow crops for export.

 

 

A Tresa

Climate Whiplash Drives Epic British Columbia Drought

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

“We’ve come to a point of no return in this province, because of the sheer amount of clear-cut logging they’ve been doing over the last 20 years. The damage is already done.”

– Younes Alila, Prof. Forest Hydrology, University of British Columbia

Drought Flood Drought

The new normal has already been here for a while

Global warming is driving an epic drought in Canada’s so called “wet coast” as rivers and streams dry up and salmon die. The drought is rated at level 5, which means the conditions are driving measurable economic adversity. At least one community has declared a state of emergency. In Victoria, the provincial capital, 2mm of rain have fallen over the past six months, a drop in the bucket compared to the 220 mm normally expected.

The area is also experiencing mass salmon die-offs and hundreds of forest fires as heat records continue to fall. Hydroelectric operations are also being affected.  

This event follows last year’s catastrophic flooding, which triggered mudslides and destroyed infrastructure, houses and highways. Interestingly, those highly unusual events from a year ago are an indirect cause of the current drought emergency: the massive quantities of rain at high elevations washed away a foot and a half of snowpack, depleting the expected annual ground water recharge.

Other human activities combine to worsen the effects of the drought, especially industrial scale clear cutting of forests. The replacement forests – which are essentially crops – take up considerably more water than the ancient trees did. Overall transpiration is decreased, putting less moisture into the atmosphere.

Rapid Hurricane Intensification Changes Everything

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

Not your father’s hurricane in the age of global warming

Wind speeds in Hurricane Ian accelerated 35 MPH in three hours as the storm churned over the Gulf of Mexico, slamming into the west coast of Florida as an historic Cat 4 monster. This used to be a rare phenomenon, but now it is becoming more common as record surface water temperatures are driving new behavior in tropical storms. It’s one of two emerging attributes of tropical storms that you should know about: rapid intensification and diminished vertical mixing..

RAPID INTENSIFICATION

While Ian will continue to get most of the attention, other recent storms have earned headlines in their own right. For example, the tail end of Typhoon Merbok did major damage in Western Alaska as warm seas sustained the storm into Arctic waters. Winds exceeded 90 plus MPH and waves overtopped 50 feet as the western part of the state was declared a disaster area. Remember Merbok? It was two weeks ago.

HURRICANE FIONA IN CANADA Meanwhile, the most recent storm to devastate Puerto Rico continued on its way and finally smashed into the Canadian Maritimes on the coast of Nova Scotia. The depleted storm nevertheless knocked out power to half a million with winds up to 110 MPH, along with flooding and extensive property damage. Hurricane Fiona went through several rapid intensification stages as it slogged its way north, killing hundreds and causing $93 billion in damage.

Hurricane Patricia (2015) on the West Coast of Mexico was remarkable because it marked blunt acknowledgement that meteorologists had been stunned by a weather system that transformed into a monster overnight. Scientists had never seen anything like it. This storm was sparsely reported because it hit the lightly populated west coast of Mexico; nevertheless it packed record breaking 215 MPH winds and remains the most powerful storm ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.

Even more dramatic, however, was the rapid intensification of this storm: Patricia’s winds ramped up by 120 MPH in 24 hours, from 85 MPH at 1:00 AM Oct 22, 205 to 205 MPH at 1:00 AM Oct 23.

There will be more Patricia’s as the oceans continue to warm.

 

DIMINISHED VERTICAL MIXING keeps the storm going

This benign sounding process magnifies and prolongs hurricane strength. In a typical tropical storm, overall system energy is reduced by a feedback in which the churning of the warm surface waters circulates with cooler layers beneath it (thermocline) as the storm progresses, lowering the overall temperature, and the amount of energy available to the system. However, as the ocean continues to warm, the depth (thickness) of warm surface layers tends to increase and the cooler waters of the thermocline are further down. As a result, the overall energy transferred to the atmosphere rises.

The overall power of the storm is sustained or even amplified.

The hurricane will be more dangerous and stick around longer.

You most likely missed these…

 

Drought Lowers Mississippi 

Drought in the Arkansas Delta is impacting agriculture as the Big Muddy becomes more muddy and barges are unable to pas due to historically low water levels.  The river joins dozens more waterways around the planet that are running dry.

Record Nigeria Floods

A severe cholera outbreak is the latest catastrophe related to catastrophic flooding that has laid waste to large sections of Nigeria. More than 300 people have lost died and thousands are displaced as more rains are expected.  

Zombie Fires In Permafrost

Zombie fires in Siberia, Scandinavia, Alaska threaten megafire outbreaks in 2023. In this rapidly heating region, exponential increases in intense lightning storms and flammable grasses suddenly growing on thawing tundra are driving record wildfires.