Freakishly High Temperatures at Both Poles

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

Arctic + 70°F over normal temperatures | Antarctic 50°F over normal temperatures

 

Perhaps one of the reasons most people are not quite grasping the scale of the global climate catastrophe is that some of the most significant events are happening in places most people don’t go. Nevertheless, weather satellites are currently reporting data from the poles that should alarm anyone and everyone (not that there is a shortage of that type of news).

It is late winter in the Arctic but temperatures are nearly at the freezing mark, about 70°F above the normal average at some measurement stations. Some near North Pole stations reported the beginning of melt, far earlier in the season than normal.

On the other end of the planet, temperature records are being set on these last days of Summer. On Friday March 18, the Concordia weather (at two miles altitude) reported 10F and the Vostok station hit 0, a new all-time record by 27 degrees. Terra Nova base was at a balmy 44.6°F. As opposed to the West Antarctic Peninsula, these temps are happening on the vast frozen Eastern Antarctica land mass, the coldest place on Earth.

At the same time, Antarctic sea ice extent is at an all time record low since measurement began in 1979;

According to National Snow and Ice Data Center’s Walt Meier:  “It’s pretty stunning. They are opposite seasons. You don’t see the north and the south (poles) both melting at the same time.  It’s definitely an unusual occurrence.”

Another scientist was less circumspect. “Wow. I have never seen anything like this in the Antarctic.*

Anomalies happen all the time or they would not be called anomalies; it is the one two punch of these simultaneous conditions that has climate scientists comparing the situation to the extended killer 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest.

While it is well documented that the Arctic is warming two to three times as fast as the rest of the planet, Antarctica has been less dramatic. (That doesn’t mean it isn’t getting hotter, it’s that the rate of increase is more modest).

Yes indeed. There are plenty of unusual occurrences to go around these days.

US Extreme Drought Area Continues To Expand

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

The mega drought that has afflicted the Western USA for two decades is expanding into the Plains states, bringing the total area of drought to 60%. This week’s drought affliction increases the total square miles by the equivalent of California. 

According to NOAA’s spring outlook, the conditions will persist through get worse and spread as temperatures remain well above normal and precipitation continues to decline.

As of early March, more than half of Kansas has been in severe drought, with Texas more than two thirds and 75% of Oklahoma.  

Among the most immediate effects will be a decline in winter wheat production, which is taking place just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine threatens global wheat supplies

In California, water authorities are staring down a continuation of an ongoing water shortage as reservoirs fail to recover after freak storms that hit in late winter. 

Lake Powell, one of a handful of critical reservoirs, is now at 3,525 feet, the lowest level since it was created in 1953. If water levels sink much more, hydropower will be shut down. In the Central Valley, three year precipitation totals are at a record low. If these trends hold, the ever worsening wildfire season will get worse.

 

 

Snapshot Of Early 2022 Climate Shock

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

Humans are funny. As a certain segment of the population obsesses over ow expensive it is to fill up the ole completely necessary Escalade, climate shock marches on.  Yet most of the stories below barely make the news and if they do, hardly register.

Perhaps seeing the some snapshots from a global perspective may move a few people.  This is what’s going on in early 2022:

Australia floods

“Waves of Water Just Coming Down”

Australia’s new normal crashed the New Year with a rain bomb in the northeast, followed by cataclysmic flooding that has killed dozens and caused the evacuation of tens of thousands. Another 500,000 were under warning in New South Wales.

This disaster is the worst since 2011, which was described as “once in a thousand year flooding.” But clearly that description is wishful thinking.

For perspective, Shane Stone, the coordinator general of the National Recovery and Resilience Agency told the Sydney Morning Herald that “the taxpayer and the ratepayer cannot continue to pick up the bill for these huge, catastrophic damage events”. Stone is a buddy of Scott Morrison, and offers a pithy perspective from a right winger who is supposed to be helping them. Although, in a sick way he is correct.

See our video Australia’s New Normal.

Argentina Wildfires

After a scorching heatwave, Argentina is suffering another round  of raging wildfires that torched forests and farms across its northern region. Eight separate fire zones in Argentina’s Corrientes province have devastated 2 million acre so far.

Authorities estimate early losses at a quarter billion dollars and the counting has not yet begun in earnest. Argentina has already limited exports of beef this year because of the rain shortfall.

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

“People are still dying by the day.”

Kenya and the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia and Somalia) 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 and an estimated 1.4 million by severe acute malnutrition. Millions of head of livestock have died of malnutrition and in Kenya, 62 elephants have starved to death.

And the people are using their flagging strength to fight over resources. The other bookend to climate migration is climate conflict. This is especially true in semi-nomadic pastoral economies as people and animals compete for dwindling water supplies. The results do not generate excellent TV news footage in the way that major wars and missile strikes do. But the results are the same.

Forecasts indicate that below average rainfall will continue into the foreseeable future.

“We are most definitely now sitting on the brink of catastrophe. “We saw animals dying together with their farmers, and the numbers I think are quite shocking.”

– Rein Paulsen

Food and Agriculture Organization Director of Emergencies and Resilience

Things Not Great At Great Salt Lake As Toxic Dust Events Loom

The inland sea that forms the iconic core of Utah’s Latter Day culture is in danger of disappearing as it reaches the lowest level since the Mormons arrived. 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. The dust poses problems for human health but also for threatens natural systems in the area and mountain snowpack. 

 

As is the case with most climate related scenarios, the rapid decline of lake levels is caused by a combination of squabbling stakeholders, diversions and global warming driven drought. 

The ongoing disaster also creates another feedback loop, similar to the sea ice albedo scenario at the poles. It works like this:

“The dust darkens the snow surface and causes it to melt earlier.”

As the lake surface area decrease, it has less and less impact on critical lake effect winter storms. Fewer storms means less total moisture in the region, increasingly drier conditions; which in turn nurtures the ongoing drought.

Polar Ice At Both Poles Is Now Melting From Below

Sea levels continue to rise and when you read this summary it’s not hard to understand why. The trillions of tons of ice on Greenland and Antarctica are being dissolved from beneath the ice mass. One process is obvious, the other not so much, but equally alarming. Link here for this reporting.

Syrians Suffer Ongoing Famine As Drought Enters Its Third Decade.

The root cause of the so called civil war in Syria was an unrelenting drought that brought farmers to their knees. The uprising began when al-Assad’s government refused to offer aid.

Ten years later, the historic drought moves into its third decade and is reported to be the worst in the Middle East for at least 1,000 years.  Conditions have worsened in the past two years, exacerbated by war and poverty. Herds have been culled and crops are generally devastated.

The iconic Khabur river is at record lows, with irrigation for starving farmers limited. The depredations of a brutal Turkish government upstream have contributed to the disaster.

Winter Rains Were Not Enough As Record Heat Returns to California

 

The west coast had record heat combined with light-to-zero precipitation in early 2022, wiping out the modest gains from freak storms late last year. The temperatures averaged 15 to 25°F over normal. San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento, Fresno and LA, along with some of the Sierra Nevada all recorded their driest January-February period on record.

Lake Shasta, the state’s largest reservoir, is at only 37 percent of its capacity. February ended with the news that water districts that supply Central Valley farms will allot no water from the Central Valley Project, further distressing critical agricultural areas.  The net result will be continued tapping into aquifers that are already being sucked dry.

Two decades ago, the critical Colorado River reservoir Lake Powell was full. Today it’s about 25% full. Once boat marina remains open.

The American West is in an extended megadrought, and it’s not the only region under water duress. This is what has been predicted and what is happening on the ground.

 

 

Australia’s Climate Shock Continues

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

“Waves of Water Just Coming Down”

Australia is beginning the year with another unprecedented global warming event, this time record rains and flooding.

Violent rain storms and flash flooding have killed dozens in Queensland and New South Wales  

More than 18,000 home have been evacuated in Queensland, including the capital Brisbane. Thousands have been evacuated and schools have been closed and infrastructure has been destroyed.

 

 

And once again, the term “unprecedented” has been used in official statements, but the word is getting tired from overuse. 

The previous record flooding in Brisbane was in 2011, and was described as “once In a century.: There is a pattern here.

A combination of geography and right wing government cupidity makes Australia with most vulnerable region on the planet. Australians are similar to Americans in that we prize our self-reliance and resilience to a fault, making us perfect targets for the corporate plunder monkeys who have spent  billions lying about the realities of global warming.

The pattern is Drought Flood Drought. 

Watch our video on Australia’s New Normal here.

 

Ice At Both Poles Melting Rapidly From Below

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

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.

2021 Planet Wide Global Warming Review

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

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.”

Central American Climate Refugees

Posted on by rapidclimatechange_tfkjps

The human face of global warming, as warming-driven ecosystem collapse makes agriculture impossible in many regions around the globe. In Central America, hundreds of thousands flee 1,600 miles north to a country that does not welcome them and more than a million are internally displaced. It is only the beginning.

Unrelenting drought followed by massive crop failure, catastrophic flooding, mudslides and two mega hurricanes back to back.
This scenario is echoed around the planet as millions are already migrating to places they are not wanted…because they have no choice.