Dyer: Global warming remains in uncharted territory (10 emails 9/21/2024 to 9/23/2024)
HPAC
Dyer: Global warming remains in uncharted territorySep 21 2024 7:11AM - Tom Goreau
Two important points in this article:
Why is it “suddenly” so hot?
Political interference with IPCC
“Nobody knows for certain yet why the planet’s average surface temperature has jumped more than two-tenths of a degree Celsius in just one year.”
In my view there is nothing at all mysterious about the “sudden jump” in global temperature. Deep ocean turnover needs to decrease almost undetectably for more significantly more heat to remain in the surface ocean. Heat is now moving faster from equator to poles and deep mixing is slowing down with increased stratification, so surface heat is now mainly accumulating in the North Pacific east of Japan, the North Atlantic east of Newfoundland, and the Arctic Ocean.
2023 Record marine heat waves: coral reef bleaching HotSpot maps reveal global sea surface temperature extremes, coral mortality, and ocean circulation changes (Goreau & Hayes, 2024):
https://academic.oup.com/oocc/article/4/1/kgae005/7666987
Here is the latest sea surface temperature anomaly map:
The impacts of the 2023 temperature anomalies accelerating Caribbean coral extinction were discussed at the New York Academy of Sciences recently and will be posted in a few days:
https://www.nyas.org/shaping-science/events/the-art-of-reef-restoration/
2. “the executive summary—the only part most journalists will ever read—is a political document negotiated between the scientists and the governments that are paying for the whole IPCC enterprise”
Indeed! It’s time to stop blaming the scientific community, which knows better, for the political censorship of their work imposed by governments who are in denial of the facts, blaming others, and avoiding financial liability. The anti-science rhetoric over IPCC “conspiracy” is put out by defenders of fossil fuel interests looking out for their own financial portfolios, and “know-nothing” right-wing and religious fanatics mystified about how nature works, who blame science and technology not for what it can do, but for who controls what technology is developed (boys with toys interested only in swords, not ploughs).
Thomas J. F. Goreau, PhD
President, Global Coral Reef Alliance
Chief Scientist, Blue Regeneration SL
President, Biorock Technology Inc.
Technical Advisor, Blue Guardians Programme, SIDS DOCK
37 Pleasant Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
goreau@globalcoral.org
www.globalcoral.org
Skype: tomgoreau
Tel: (1) 617-864-4226 (leave message)
Books:
Geotherapy: Innovative Methods of Soil Fertility Restoration, Carbon Sequestration, and Reversing CO2 Increase
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466595392
Innovative Methods of Marine Ecosystem Restoration
http://www.crcpress.com/product/isbn/9781466557734
Geotherapy: Regenerating ecosystem services to reverse climate change
No one can change the past, everybody can change the future
It’s much later than we think, especially if we don’t think
Those with their heads in the sand will see the light when global warming and sea level rise wash the beach away
“When you run to the rocks, the rocks will be melting, when you run to the sea, the sea will be boiling”, Peter Tosh, Jamaica’s greatest song writer
Sep 21 2024 9:20AM - Robin Collins
https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2024/09/16/global-warming-remains-in-uncharted-territory/434314/
“We need to hold the heat down while the emissions work proceeds…”
Saturday, September 21, 2024 | Latest Paper
Global warming remains in uncharted territory
The trend in average global temperature has been racing upwards for decades, breaching the pre-industrial target for more than a whole year.
https://www.hilltimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/NWT_Fire_1-e1709754854739.jpg
There is a widening gap between what the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change says, and what is happening on the ground: monster wildfires, unprecedented heatwaves, and killer landslides, writes Gwynne Dyer. Photograph courtesy of N.W.T. Fire
OPINION
BY GWYNNE DYER
September 16, 2024 The Hill Times
LONDON, U.K.—No sirens are blaring, nobody even looks frightened—but they should be. Last week the world moved into uncharted territory. The “aspirational” goal of never allowing the average global temperature to rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than the pre-industrial norm (+1.5 C) has been breached for a whole year—and probably forever.
“Never” is a long time, so the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC)—when it set that target in 2018—actually said that it should remain achievable until at least 2050. You may have noticed that the year is only 2024, and we are already there. Something has gone wrong, and there is a scramble to cover it up.
This takes two forms. One is to say that it’s just a temporary effect related to the recent El Niño, a cyclical ocean event that occasionally raises the average global temperature a bit for nine to 12 months, then subsides again.
The trouble with that explanation is that the “anomaly”—as climate scientists are calling the unexpected warming—was twice as big as any El Niño event has ever been. It also began months before this El Niño got going—and it did not go away when the El Niño died out back in April. The “anomaly” is still there.
So much for that attempt to explain the “anomaly” away, but there’s another. What if a whole year above +1.5 C doesn’t count as “breaching the limit”? It doesn’t, according to the IPCC’s counting rules. Those rules say it won’t be reached until the average global temperature has been +1.5 C for the past 20 years—so about 10 years from now, in practice.
Calculating long-term averages for global temperature made sense when the climate was basically stable and just jiggled around a bit from year to year, but those days are long gone.
The trend in average global temperature has been relentlessly upwards for decades now. To insist on mixing in cooler temperatures from 20 years ago to come up with a number that understates the reality of the present would be self-deception at best.
What would it be at worst? I wouldn’t use the words “deliberate misrepresentation,” but something complicated and largely invisible happens at the conclusion of each assessment report, the scientific document upon which the IPCC’s now-annual conferences are based.
The data and conclusions in the hundreds of pages of the reports are valid and unbiased, but the executive summary—the only part most journalists will ever read—is a political document negotiated between the scientists and the governments that are paying for the whole IPCC enterprise.
The scientists are already hampered by their own professional reluctance to discuss their private and tentative conclusions in public. Alas, that handicaps them in their protracted arm-wrestle over the executive summary with governments that are deeply concerned about climate change, but always want to avoid large spending commitments right now.
I’m relying on private information from some scientists who have been involved in the process, but the governments usually win. (“He who pays the piper calls the tune.”) This may explain the widening gap between what the IPCC says, and what we can see with our own eyes: monster wildfires, unprecedented heatwaves, killer landslides, and all the rest.
So what is causing all this heat and havoc? Nobody knows for certain yet why the planet’s average surface temperature has jumped more than two-tenths of a degree Celsius in just one year. However, the prime suspects are feedbacks that have been triggered by our own emissions-related heating and are also adding to the warming.
There are three leading candidates. Melting ice and snow are uncovering open water and dark rock that absorb more sunlight. Cleaning up the emissions from 60,000 giant merchant ships has eliminated the “ship tracks” that used to reflect much incoming sunlight. The huge forest fires that are devastating the Americas may be a much bigger feedback than we thought.
What can we do about all this? The stock answer is “cut your greenhouse gas emissions,” and we should move as fast as we can on that front, but it is delusional to go on pretending that this is all we can and must do. After 30 years of trying, our emissions are still growing almost every year (although we may start to make a little progress soon).
We need to hold the heat down while the emissions work proceeds, or the growing chaos, damage, and violence will make further progress on any front impossible. The various ways to do that are called “geoengineering” or climate engineering, and for a long time it was taboo. That never made sense, and now the prejudice is fading fast.
Geoengineering is a very big subject, but if you’re interested I recently wrote a book about it.
Gwynne Dyer’s new book is Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World’s Climate Engineers. Last year’s book, The Shortest History of War, is also still available.
The Hill Times
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Sep 21 2024 10:28AM - David Price
I agree with Tom — and the explanation of increased ocean turnover makes more sense than Dyer’s suggestion that
“ The huge forest fires that are devastating the Americas may be a much bigger feedback than we thought”
What feedback is Dyer thinking of? Sure the fires are a positive feedback but their overall contribution to increased annual CO2 forcing are relatively tiny and still subject to inter-annual variation. Changes in ocean circulation are in comparison the monster that once awakened will not go back to sleep.
David
From my cellphone
I acknowledge that I reside on unceded Traditional Territory
of the Secwépemc People
Sep 21 2024 10:37AM - Tom Goreau
The Amazonian forest fires are now the world’s largest source of atmospheric pollution, about as big as last month’s unexplained August Arctic Event: Here’s the latest carbon monoxide map:
Sep 21 2024 11:28AM - David Price
Interesting, but these emissions from forest fires are unlikely to persist for more than a few weeks — though I suppose a critical threshold for crossing a tipping point could be happening. Even so, the +0.2 C increase is an annual observation, dependent on weather data accumulated over the previous 12 months and not on what is happening today, or happened a few weeks ago. If extraordinary forest fire activity were to be widespread and more or less continuous, then I’d think Dyer’s argument is more plausible (but a short term increase in GHG emissions would not produce an immediate response in rate of temperature increase). The other explanations—of changes in surface albedo would produce a more rapid temperature response. It will be interesting to see what happens and what Carbon Tracker tells us. (I am assuming CT is still operational?):
https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/carbontracker/
Incidentally in my previous comment I should have said “decreased ocean turnover”.
David
From my cellphone
I acknowledge that I reside on unceded Traditional Territory
of the Secwépemc People
Sep 21 2024 11:40AM - Tom Goreau
Agreed that the ocean is the major driver of the temperature changes, but the forest fires in Amazonia are no longer ephemeral events during short but extreme droughts, they have now being going on in one part of Amazonia or another for several years now. These are no longer exceptional events, they have become normal, and all of Amazonia has become a major global carbon source. The same is happening on a smaller scale in the Congo Basin and in SE Asia.
I’m cc’ing Foster Brown, who runs the fire prevention programs for the State of Acre in Western Amazonia, who first took me to measure greenhouse gas emissions in Amazonia in 1983. Hopefully they will get some rain next week!
Sep 22 2024 7:34PM - rob de laet
We are losing the Amazon. The tipping point is here and it is going much faster than people think. The world does not understand the full extent of the disaster, because they do not fully realize the cooling and rainmaking capacity of great rainforests. We need to wake up the decision makers to the grave and immediate danger to the Earth’s climate, biodiversity and global food security if we cannot stop and reverse the damage in the Amazon rainforest very fast!
HOW MUCH DOES THIS ECOSYSTEM COOL?
The combined forest cover of the Amazon and Orinoco watersheds, totaling 6.5 million square kilometers, provides an impressive cooling effect of approximately 190 W/m² through evapotranspiration and cloud formation when in optima forma. This cooling, which is almost entirely through the atmospheric watercycling, translates to around 3.89 x 10²² joules/year. Remarkably, this is capable of offsetting 133.6% of the current global Earth's Energy Imbalance (EEI), which stands at 2.91 x 10²² joules/year or about 1,81 W/m2. In essence, the cooling effect from this vast tropical forest area is already more than neutralizing global overheating, highlighting the critical role these forests play in climate regulation and the importance of their preservation and restoration.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE RAINS?
If the Amazon dieback is not stopped fast, it will become a fast accelerating self-reinforcing feedback loop which will dry out most of South America very fast, collapsing food production, fresh water availability to cities from Bogota to Sao Paulo. Below you see a modelling that includes the proven rain making and biotic pump function of the Amazon rainforest. Rains in Manaus will drop till 5-13% of historic means, in Leticia we are looking at just 2% which is compatible not with savanna but with desert conditions.
Inline image
PROPOSED STRUCTURE TO ACT TOGETHER
Protecting the Amazon is crucial to maintaining planetary health and keeping global temperatures in check. Without it, global temperatures could rise by more than 2°C within decades. The forest will not survive without large scale intervention.
Looking to form a global emergency team to bring the finance together to counter this, I have a rough plan how to do it that can be worked out into great detail should the world be interested reaction to this greatest climate calamity to date,
Best,
Rob de Laet
Member of the EcoRestoration Alliance
Fellow of Global Evergreening Alliance
Co-founder of Senang Eco Services
WhatsApp: +55 71 992617846
Sep 23 2024 5:49AM - Tom Goreau
Today:
South America drought brings wildfires and blackouts
12 hours ago
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Jacqueline Howard
BBC News
Reporting fromLondon
Reuters Two people in military fatigues sit in the bed of a truck in a street enveloped in darknessReuters
The emergency measures mean that Ecuador's military patrol the streets in darkness
Planned power cuts in Ecuador have begun a day early as severe drought disrupts its hydroelectric plants.
The country is suffering its worst drought in 60 years, with no significant rainfall in more than two months.
The government had already announced nightly blackouts across the country from Monday, but 12 provinces had their power cut from 08:00 to 17:00 local time over the weekend.
Several South American countries are currently experiencing their worst droughts on record, which is also fuelling a number of wildfires.
Hydroelectric plants cover 70% of Ecuador's electricity demand, but the water reserves that fuel it have fallen to critical levels.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa said there could be further cuts and other emergency measures introduced if water levels in the hydroelectric plants are not restored soon.
In addition to the 71 days without rain, Noboa also blamed the emergency on political failings.
In a statement, the president blamed the power crisis on the failure of previous governments to adequately maintain infrastructure and the lack of contingency planning.
A red alert has been imposed in 15 provinces including the capital Quito.
Sixty neighbourhoods in Quito have had their water supplies cut as part of rationing measures.
It was less than six months ago that Ecuadorians were last rationing electricity.
In April, drought saw the country impose power cuts of up to 13 hours a day.
The current drought is certainly not contained to Ecuador - several other countries in South America are suffering the impact of the worst drought in living memory
Extreme drought has devastated vast areas of the Amazon and the Pantanal in Brazil, Bolivia and Peru.
In Colombia, firefighters are battling dozens of fires, which have so far ravaged almost 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres).
Earlier this week, Peru's government declared a 60-day state of emergency in the jungle regions bordering Brazil and Ecuador which have been worst affected by forest fires.
The drought has also weakened the vast Amazon River, affecting food supplies and the livelihoods of locals.
Last week, the Brazilian Geological Service (SGB) said water levels in many of the rivers in the Amazon basin had reached their lowest on record.
In 2023, the Amazon basin suffered its most severe drought in at least 45 years – which scientists at the World Weather Attribution group found had been made many times more likely by climate change.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0ed8vg5x9o
Sep 23 2024 6:08AM - Tom Goreau
Fires in Amazonia
Sep 23 2024 6:37AM - Tom Goreau
Dear Anastassia,
SST data shows a slowdown in ocean overturning, and some of that is driven by changing wind speeds as the land-ocean pressure gradient increases due to more rapid warming on land.
Is there evidence of a concurrent slowdown in the Hadley circulation from surface pressure and wind maps?
Best wishes,
Tom
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