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Here is a scientific view of the Climate Events we are Witnessing as outlinedby Dr John James. | ||
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12:25 PM (5 minutes ago)
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Here is a deep time view of the events we are witnessing.
Fire and Human Evolution: The deep-time blueprints of the Anthropocene
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213305414000046
Andrew
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11:49 AM (5 minutes ago)
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The amplification will intensify.
Much of the Arctic shows methane concentrations of more than 2000 ppb today.
The total greenhouse gases locking heat into the Arctic cap of the planet are on the order of 600 ppm CO2 equivalent & accelerating.
The Arctic is the proverbial “canary in the coal mine”.
Or next year when the summer arctic ice will almost surely be completely gone?
The thickness of the arctic ice has declined even more dramatically than the total square mile area of decline.
3) The 2013-2014 winter melting of Arctic ice is a sign that the tipping point is past.
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Heard on ABC News radio this morning. A distressed call was replayed from a
policeman re PTSD who later suicided. Very emotional.
There are instances of PTSD among police and armed service members suffering
from this condition resulting in family breakdowns and in some cases suicides.
These people put their lives on the line in carrying out their sworn duties in the
protection of the public and in combat zones.
Not enough is being done to assist and rehabilitate these people to live a normal
Life when this condtion manifests itself.
These cases must be fully recognised and appropriate treatment and counselling
provided.
Columbia University
Earth Institute
475 Riverside Drive
New York, NY 10115 USA
E-mail: jeh1@columbia.edu
Home | Communications | Presentations | Photos, Video & Audio | Scholarly Publications | Other Publications | CV & Interests
On the webpage “Updating the Climate Science: What Path is the Real World Following?”, Drs. Makiko Sato and James Hansen update figures in the book Storms of My Grandchildren (see LA Times review) and present updated graphs and discussion of key quantities that help provide understanding of how climate change is developing and how effective or ineffective global actions are in affecting climate forcings and future climate change. A few errata in Storms are also provided.
Dr. Hansen periodically posts commentary on his recent papers and presentations and on other topics of interest to an e-mail list. To receive announcements of new postings, please click here.
Hansen, J., P. Kharecha, M. Sato, V. Masson-Delmotte, et al., Assessing “Dangerous Climate Change”: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature. PLOS ONE, 8, e81468.
Hansen, J., M. Sato, G. Russell, and P. Kharecha, 2013: Climate sensitivity, sea level, and atmospheric carbon dioxide. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A, 371, 20120294, doi:10.1098/rsta.2012.0294.
Apr. 4, 2013: Keystone XL: The pipeline to disaster. Op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.
February 2014: Symposium on a New Type of Major Power Relationship: Presentation given at Counsellors Office of the State Council, Beijin, China on Feb. 24.
+ Download PDF (3.5 MB)
December 2013: Minimizing Irreversible Impacts of Human-Made Climate Change: Presentation given at AGU Fall Meeting on Dec. 12.
+ Download PDF (4.3 MB)
September 2012: A New Age of Risk: Presentation given at Columbia University on Sep. 22.
+ Download PDF (2.1 MB)
+ Download PPT (2.5 MB)
December 2012: Discussion at Climate One about Superstorm Sandy and Carbon Pricing.
Climate change is making it harder than usual for scientists to figure out what the future will bring and what impact weather changes will have on society and the economy. An upsurge of severe weather events has already destroyed homes, businesses and lives. Some fairly simple changes may reduce the toll.
In a laboratory test, a house built with conventional techniques is falling apart in hurricane-force winds.
The survivor has stronger shingles, thicker roof boards, and metal straps holding floors together.
Wind tunnel tests were done by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety. It says stronger construction costs a little more, but holds up much better to extreme weather.
The growing number of unusually strong storms, like Typhoon Haiyan, has convinced the Chairman of the U. S. Senate Homeland Security Committee, Tom Carper, that extreme weather is the “new norm.”
“Extreme weather events have increased in frequency over the past 50 years and are expected to become even more common, more intense, and more costly,” said Carper.
Hurricane Sandy hit beachfront businesses along the U.S. East Coast, including Carper’s home state. Insurance companies had to pay out huge claims. To limit such losses, the insurance industry can raise premiums for businesses in vulnerable locations and offer discounts to clients who make their buildings more resilient with upgraded construction techniques.
Managing risks is the job of insurance brokers like Kevin Connelly of the Graham Company, who spoke to VOA via Skype.
“We are either going to price your insurance at a huge markup, or we are not going to write (sell it) it at all, which is just as bad obviously,” said Connelly.
Drought is another suspected consequence of climate change, and dry ground means more wildfires in California. Current mathematical models of climate change do a poor job of predicting the economic impact of drought and other weather events, says Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Robert Pindyck, who spoke via Skype.
“I think all we can do, taking all of that into account, is come up with some very rough numbers, very rough estimates, “said Pindyck. “Consensus estimates that maybe experts provide, that give us a view of what would the catastrophic outcome look like if we don’t do anything?”
To help deal with this serious problem, Pindyck says policymakers should take actions such as imposing a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. A carbon tax would encourage companies and families to use less energy and generate fewer of the gases thought to be driving changes in the climate. But other analysts say it is unlikely a new tax will get approval in the U.S.
Methane releases in the Arctic can lead to abrupt local warming that triggers further methane releases. The amount of methane stored in hydrates is huge and release of even a small part of the methane in hydrates could lead to runaway global warming.
The image displayed on the left shows that methane’s global warming potential (GWP) is more than 130 times that of carbon dioxide over a period of ten years.
The image featured in a video and poster produced by Sam Carana1 (2012a).
IPCC2 figures were used to create the blue line. The red line is based on figures in a study by Shindell et al.3, which are higher as they include more effects. This study concludes that methane’s GWP would likely be further increased when including ecosystem responses.
Ecosystem responses can be particularly strong in the Arctic. As mentioned on the poster, further warming in the Arctic can cause accelerated ice loss and trigger further releases of methane from sediments under the sea.
Release of methane from sediments is particularly worrying in areas such as the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS), where the sea is rather shallow (image below), causing much of the methane to enter the atmosphere without being oxidized in the water.
Furthermore, low water temperatures and long sea currents in the Arctic Ocean are not very friendly toward bacteria that might otherwise break down methane in the water.
This is the case for areas such as the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) that contain huge amounts of methane in the form of free gas in sediments and in hydrates.
As said, Shindell’s GWP figures do not include all indirect effects. Accelerated loss of sea ice and weakening of methane stores, due to the additional local warming of methane locally, can have a dramatic impact in case of large abrupt methane release in the Arctic.
The images below are from Flanner4 (2011) and shows that ice in the Arctic can cool areas by more than 30 Watts per square meter, and in summer by up to 70 Watts per square meter.
Apart from decline of snow and ice, additional methane releases could also dramatically increase accelerate local warming.
The potential amount of methane estimated by Shakhova et al. are 1700 Gt5 in the ESAS (image left) alone, in the form of methane in hydrates and as free gas, with further carbon contained in permafrost that may be released as methane as the frozen soil and lakes melt.The image below, from Sam Carana8 (2011), illustrates the danger of the situation in the Arctic, where high levels of greenhouse gases, combined with the impact of aerosols such as soot, can cause high summer temperature peaks.
High temperatures in the Arctic will speed up loss of sea ice, resulting in even further warming that weakens stores of methane in the form of hydrates and free gas in sediments under the water, in a vicious cycle that threatens to lead to runaway global warming.
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| For more details on feedbacks, see extended version of this image and discussion at arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/08/diagram-of-doom.html |
The IPCC2 rates methane’s Radiative Efficiency (in W m–2 ppb–1) at 3.7 x 10–4 and gives methane a perturbation lifetime of 12 years9. The IPCC9 defines perturbation time as the time it takes for a perturbation to be reduced to 37% of its initial amount. At the same time, the IPCC10 gives methane a global mean atmospheric lifetime of 8.4 years, which is the time it takes for half a perturbation to be broken down.
Methane’s lifetime will be extended as the burden rises, due to hydroxyl depletion. The IPCC11 estimates that this methane feedback effect amplifies the climate forcing of an addition of methane to the current atmosphere by lengthening the perturbation lifetime relative to the global atmospheric lifetime of methane by a factor of 1.4.
A NASA12 (2009) article discussing Shindell’s work mentions that increases in global methane emissions have caused a 26% decrease in hydroxyl.
Prather et al.13 (2012) derive a present-day atmospheric lifetime for methane (CH4) of 9.1 years.
In case of large abrupt releases of methane in the Arctic, much of the methane may persist there for decades and thus amplify local warming dramatically.
What would the impact be of abrupt release of 1Gt of methane in the Arctic, compared to the total global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel burning, cement manufacture, and gas flaring? The image below, from Sam Carana16 (2012b), gives a rather conservative impact, showing a rapid decline toward a small residual impact as carbon dioxide.
However, above graph does not include the indirect effect of triggering further releases. This is especially a threat in the Arctic, given the large presence of methane, the accelerated warming, the little oxidation that takes place in the Arctic atmosphere, and the time it will take for abruptly released methane to spread away from the Arctic.
The additional warming that this will cause in the Arctic will make the sea ice decline even more dramatically than is already the case now. The combined impact of sea ice loss and methane is huge, and threatens to trigger further releases of methane in the Arctic, with their joint impact accumulating as illustrated in the image below, also from Sam Carana16 (2012b).
Dramatic warming will first strike in the Arctic, but will soon spread, threatening to cause heatwaves and firestorms across North America and Siberia, adding additional soot and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere globally, as forests, peat bogs and tundras at higher latitudes burn, threatening to escalate in runaway global warming.
References
1. Sam Carana (2012a), Video and poster – methane in the Arctic
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/05/video-and-poster-methane-in-arctic.html
2. IPCC, Climate Change 2007: Working Group I: The Physical Science Basis, Table 2.14
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch2s2-10-2.html
6. Natalia Shakhova et al. (2008)
EGU General Assembly 2008
7. Semiletov et al. (2012)
On carbon transport and fate in the East Siberian Arctic land–shelf–atmosphere system
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/1/015201
10. IPCC, TAR (2001) Working Group I: The Scientific Basis, 4.1.1 Sources of Greenhouse Gases
11. IPCC, TAR, 04 (2001), Atmospheric Chemistry and Greenhouse Gases, Executive Summary
12. NASA (2009), Interactions with Aerosols Boost Warming Potential of Some Gases
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20091029/
13. Prather et al. (2012), Reactive greenhouse gas scenarios: Systematic exploration of uncertainties and the role of atmospheric chemistry
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2012GL051440.shtml
14. Taraborelli et al (2012), Hydroxyl radical buffered by isoprene oxidation over tropical forests
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo1405.html
15. Euan G. Nisbet (2002), Have sudden large releases of methane from geological reservoirs occurred since the Last Glacial Maximum, and could such releases occur again?
http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/360/1793/581.abstract
16. Sam Carana (2012b), How much time is there left to act?
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/how-much-time-is-there-left-to-act.html
