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Global Warming 
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Wed Dec 14, 2011 at 10:36:46 AM MST
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I haven't written about polar ice conditions for a few months due to lack of time thanks to school. Hopefully my time availability moving forward will be high enough to keep this series going.
The state of global polar sea ice area in early December 2011 has temporarily returned to near climatologically normal conditions (1979-2009). Arctic sea ice has recovered very quickly after starting the freeze season slowly and Antarctic sea ice is benefiting from weather conditions preventing extensive melt at the edges in much the same way as it did last year at the same time. Since my last post (covering August conditions), polar sea ice has generally recovered from an extensive deficit of negative 2 million sq. km. The long time that sea ice area spent near this dramatic condition is unprecedented in the modern era. Poor conditions established this development across the Arctic this year.
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Thu Sep 08, 2011 at 21:28:34 PM MST
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While Colorado's weather this summer shifted from warm to wet to hot, it was plain and simply nothing but hot, hot, and hot in the states to our south. How hot was it?
It was so hot that Texas and Oklahoma set the U.S. record for the 1st and 2nd hottest summers: 86.8F and 86.5F, respectively, beating out Oklahoma's 1934 record (set during the Dust Bowl years) of 85.2F. To be clear, from June through August, the average of all the temperatures taken at the top of every hour came out to above 86 degrees. Oh, Louisiana's 2011 summer now ranks 4th warmest all-time at 84.5F.
When records from the previous hottest period in the nation's history are falling, it's time to pay attention. Instead of natural variability playing the primary role, the heat wave this year has been boosted by the altered background state.
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Thu Jul 21, 2011 at 10:05:18 AM MST
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According to data released by NASA and NOAA this month, June 2011 ranked among the top 10 warmest Junes on record: NASA recorded the 8th warmest June in its dataset; NOAA recorded the 7th warmest June in its dataset. The two agencies have slightly different analysis techniques, which actually helps to reinforce the results from each other.
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Fri Jul 15, 2011 at 10:55:05 AM MST
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Among other energy-related news, Canadian tar sands oil has maintained a relatively low profile, even in American environmental circles. That's dangerously short-sighted. As I've argued against overt climate change denialism, it seems some groups closer to my worldview need some education and encouragement to do the correct thing.
The U.S. State Department apparently has been working to alleviate concerns of parties in Canada interested in transporting tar sands oil from Alberta to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. This wouldn't change the balance of what gets processed in the U.S. very much, but one of the arguments for doing this would be to decrease the amount of oil processed from unstable regions (i.e. the Middle East). The U.S. State Department, in 2009, helped work on this and other messaging for pro-dirty energy interests. That would be the Obama State Department, headed by Hillary Clinton. Obama has taken some actions which can be characterized as good in dealing with the threat of climate change. Unfortunately, this isn't the only action he's taken which can be characterized as bad.
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Sat Jul 09, 2011 at 10:13:02 AM MST
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This is via Theoildrum.com and argues that warming can be behind environmental spills. The author has a point: The theory is that climate change is causing unusual flooding. That affects pipelines that were once thought to be buried safely underground, but close to river banks. Investigators into the Yellowstone spill have attributed that reason for the 42,000 gallon leak that is mucking up an area of the beloved national park in Montana.
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Unusual river flooding causes more severe erosion around river banks, exposing buried objects at a faster than expected rate. Rocks and boulders knocked loose by the flooding can bash against pipelines and knock holes in them, causing massive spills. It's just this kind of incident that investigators suspect caused the Yellowstone oil spill.
However, one would have to be able to show that warming is responsible for the flooding and not a within-norms wet year. I think it's something that should be investigated and questioned when we discuss warming and the effects on our lives.
If it is, there is going to be some pretty heavy investment in shoring up pipelines and other transportation-related industries and those will bring jobs. So, there is something positive about all this, too.
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Tue Jun 21, 2011 at 15:53:31 PM MST
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( - promoted by Fong)
To many who have paid attention to the developing climate change crisis, the news that a mass extinction could occur in the world's oceans shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Climate change isn't just about higher surface temperatures and slightly different precipitation patterns. No, a set of issues are currently unfolding. That set is getting more complex and more pertinent to our daily lives. A preliminary report, issued by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), begins to detail just how dangerous our actions are to the oceans. Among other things, the report's findings are of critical importance because the panel found that ocean degeneration is already occurring at a much faster rate than has been previously projected.
"The findings are shocking," Dr. Alex Rogers, IPSO's scientific director, said in a statement released by the group. "This is a very serious situation demanding unequivocal action at every level. We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime, and worse, our children's and generations beyond that."
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Tue Jun 07, 2011 at 12:48:52 PM MST
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[Note: This post first appeared yesterday in partial form. This is the full post. My apologies.]
The state of global polar sea ice area at the beginning of June 2011 remains poor: well below climatological conditions (1979-2009) continue to persist.
Sea ice in the Arctic continues to track significantly below average, with the 3rd lowest readings for the month in the modern era. Antarctic sea ice recovered somewhat more quickly to normal conditions than was the case the month before. Global sea ice area has therefore remained near historical lows for an extended period of time this year. Within the last month, global sea ice area has finally improved from the 1 million sq. km. deficit from climatological conditions that characterized the first four months of 2011. To help put this in context, only 2006 and 2007 saw similar conditions. In 2007, the Arctic (and global) sea ice area fell to its lowest extent in modern history.
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Sat May 21, 2011 at 07:00:00 AM MST
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Even with a strong La Niña (see figure 2 below) and a slow exit from a deep solar minimum (see figure 3 below), the globally averaged temperature tied for the 4th warmest April on record, according to NASA's GISS. At 0.55°C above the 1951-1980 average, April 2011's warmth trails only 2005, 2007, and 2010. It tied with 2002 and just beat 1998. It is worth noting that in 2010 and 1998, strong El Niños were occurring. Such is the state of the climate having been forced by our species' greenhouse gas pollution. April's 0.55°C anomaly follows March's 0.57°C anomaly.
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Wed May 11, 2011 at 13:02:58 PM MST
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[Updated some explanations for clarity - WD]
If you encounter national news with any regularity, you've probably heard separate news stories that are very much connected. The first are the record wildfires plaguing Texas - while relatively few in number, the acreage they've burned has set a number of records. The wildfires are accompanied by record drought conditions. The extreme drought conditions cover a large majority (73.73%) of Texas as of May 3, 2011, as the figure below from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows. Exceptional drought conditions now affect a whopping 25.96% of Texas. No part of the state is doing better than abnormally dry this week, which is actually somewhat of an improvement over conditions a week ago.
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Tue May 03, 2011 at 11:49:28 AM MST
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Most of the projections in the science portion of the IPCC's 2007 4th Assessment Report have been shown many times since its issuance to be too conservative. Temperatures have risen faster; ice (sea- and land-based) has melted faster; ocean acidification and warming has happened faster, the number of extreme weather events has increased faster, etc.
I've written before about most of these. I will take this space to write once again about polar ice melting faster than projected (according to observations) and the impact that will have on global coastlines.
According to the executive summary of a new assessment of Arctic climate, the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP) reports that Arctic temperatures in the past six years were higher than at any time since measurements began in 1880. Moreover, feedback mechanisms have already started.
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Wed Apr 20, 2011 at 18:04:48 PM MST
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A lot of local government officials act like buses don't exist, so I was excited and thankful on Monday when one of my city council members recognized their importance. Vicki Stack is the representative for Ward One on the Lakewood City Council, and she would like connecting service to the West Corridor light rail line to run every two and a half minutes. She asked an RTD how to get buses running that often. He was somewhat wishy washy on that point, so I thought that I would answer her question here. We get buses to run frequently by paying for them. Lakewood can get the money in a variety of ways. The city can apply for state and federal money that RTD is not eligible for. (It would help if the city lobbied to make sure the state and federal governments fund transit.) Lakewood could ask Jefferson County to support transit. Lakewood could calculate how much a significant increase in transit could save in road repairs, health care costs, etc. to see if transit improvements would pay for themselves. Lakewood could ask voters for a sales tax or mill levy increase. Similar ballot issues pass more often than they fail. Roads and driving are not going to get any cheaper. As WeatherDem pointed out, global warming is not getting better. People are moving out of suburban into urban environments. Local governments need to support policies that recognize these realities. And we need to support government representatives who do so.
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Sun Mar 27, 2011 at 16:02:10 PM MST
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Global warming is causing dramatic enough shifts in temperature and precipitation such that downstream effects are starting to show up across the globe. I picked up the following from an economics blog, but wanted to focus on the likely underlying causality to make a point about the future (source):
Dry conditions extending to Oklahoma, Kansas and Colorado may cut crop yields in the U.S., the world's largest exporter, as too much moisture threatens fields in North Dakota and in Canada. Wheat futures in Chicago are up 50 percent in the past year, after drought in Russia and floods in Australia hurt output and sent global food prices surging. Wholesale beef reached a record this week, and the U.S. cattle herd in January was the smallest since 1958.
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Sat Mar 12, 2011 at 12:30:42 PM MST
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In September of 2009, just after back to back earthquakes in Samoa and Indonesia, I wrote an article entitled "Climate Change, A whole lot of shaking going on" where scientists have theorized that Earthquakes are increasing due to an unlikely cause - Climate Change.
The theory is that while Earthquakes on different Tectonic plates do not cause others to occur, for instance the Samoan and Indonesian quakes happened within one day of each other, they can be correlated to other quakes and seismic activity - specifically to 'glacial quakes' caused by fast melting and moving multi-ton glaciers on Greenland.
It's been nearly 2 years since then, let's reconsider this theory, and remember, 2 years is not even a blink of an eye in Geologic time.
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Tue Feb 22, 2011 at 12:34:05 PM MST
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I've written about Arctic sea ice conditions for a couple of years now. As I've written new posts, I've tried to include information regarding the science behind the conditions being written. 2010 was a particularly bad year for Arctic ice, as conditions were recorded to be well below average conditions for months at a time. Arctic ice in September 2010 challenged the record low minimum extent observed in the modern era in 2007. My summary conclusion after paying attention to Arctic sea ice is this: the Arctic has entered into a new climatic regime. Conditions are now regularly quite different than those observed in the past couple hundred years. I'm going to provide a broader look at this topic in this post.
When I have written about climatic changes, especially in the context of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 4th Assessment Report Physical Science Basis (IPCC 4AR WG1), I have increasingly mentioned the disturbing fact that the IPCC's projections were far too conservative to be of real use to policy makers. The reason is both simple and complex. Simply put, the IPCC focused on moderate greenhouse pollution scenarios that were better researched. The biggest problem with that is the globe's actual emissions path is following the worst-case scenario (A1FI) considered by the IPCC 4AR (courtesy of Hansen and Sato; data through 2010):
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Thu Jan 27, 2011 at 15:04:49 PM MST
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In my last 2 State of the Pole posts (Dec and Jan), I noted that the Hudson Bay, the Baffin and Newfoundland Seas and Canadian Archipelago region was witnessing something astonishing: sea ice was forming weeks to months late. I identified a leading cause for this condition: for the 2nd winter in a row, the North Atlantic Oscillation and Arctic Oscillation were registering historical negative values. When they're in their negative phase, both of these climatological phenomena allow arctic air to flow south and impact the U.S. and Europe because the polar jet stream weakens and meanders further south than it normally does. As colder air is allowed to move south, warmer air is allowed to move north. While the eastern U.S. and Europe have experienced a colder than normal winter along with more precipitation than normal, northeastern Canada has experienced the opposite: the warmest 30-day period in mid-winter on record. Of course, the fact that the Arctic has undergone rapid, significant changes in the past decade are also part of the reason for this occurrence. Our influence on the climate system has loaded the die. With each toss, there is a higher chance that extreme weather events will occur.
The climate change denial zombies love to point out snowstorms and cold air outbreaks in the U.S. during winter. They somehow think it means their patron saint James Inhofe was correct when he stated that global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind. While they're busy pointing out that yes, indeed, it does snow in winter, they try very hard to ignore the fact that seas that should be frozen by December 1st remain unfrozen in late January. Has it been cold along the eastern U.S.? Yes, 5-11°F below average for the 30-day period between 17 December 2010 to 15 January 2011. During that same time, however, northeastern Canada witnessed surface temperatures from 16°F to greater than 38°F above average - for 30 days! Recall that in my write-up of NASA's and NOAA's global temperature analysis for 2010, both agencies identified December as being among the 25 warmest Decembers on record globally. Despite one of the strongest La Ninas on record and a slow emergence from the sun's latest cycle minimum, December was still warm compared to over 100 years of global temperature records at 0.67°F above average. One of the drawbacks of looking at the global average is the possibility of masking averages that might indicate something important occurring over smaller regions - like northeast Canada.
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Sat Jan 22, 2011 at 14:17:08 PM MST
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NASA's James Hansen and Makiko Sato have a new draft paper that brings potential climate tipping points into more focus and the results are incredibly important. They examine some differences between two recent geologic times, the Eemian and the Pliocene, and today. During the Eemian, sea levels were 15-20 feet higher than today. During the Pliocene, sea levels were 82 feet higher than today. If we maintain our business-as-usual (BAU) greenhouse emissions path, the authors state that multi-meter sea level rise within this century becomes "almost dead certain" because of nonlinear responses to that forcing. To be clear, that means that future temperature increases will not be equal for the same amount of future emissions. Instead, future emissions will cause a radical and unreversable jump in global temperatures, which will lead to radical jumps in sea level rise. We won't have a 1" per year increase in sea level. The difference year after year will be greater and greater as the climate system attempts to find a new stable region. I want to point out that Hansen and Sato use extremely strong language for climate scientists. Will it be strong enough to generate the political will necessary to take us off that path?
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Thu Jan 13, 2011 at 15:55:28 PM MST
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The state of global polar sea ice area at the beginning of 2011 continues the trend present throughout most of 2010: well below climatological conditions (1979-2009). Sea ice in the Arctic continues to track far below average while Antarctic sea ice has tracked closer to average from above average the past couple of months. Overall, the rate at which Arctic sea ice is refreezing and Antarctic ice is melting is not out of the ordinary. The locations where freezing and melting is occurring is once again news this month. Global sea ice is rapidly decreasing, as is normal for this time of year due to Antarctic environmental conditions. The value of global sea ice area has already fallen below the average level of 16 million sq. km. The yearly absolute minimum should occur within the next month or so, at which time we'll be able to determine whether 2011's minimum is more like 2005, 2009 and 2010 (~15 million sq. km.) or whether 2011's minimum is more like 2006 and 2007 (~14.5 million sq. km.).
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Sun Dec 19, 2010 at 15:07:44 PM MST
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( - promoted by Fong)
[Updated to include more complete context and to provide a link showing what 10ft of sea level rise looks like.]
Until just a few years ago, scientists were unsure why the global energy budget seemed to indicate that an enormous amount of energy couldn't be accounted for. Incoming and outgoing radiation is fairly straightforward to measure and a simple energy budget is easy to calculate. Accounting for all of the movement of energy within Earth's climate system imposes a great deal of complexity into the process. Still, numerous attempts were made to try to track down what was growing into a very large amount of energy: was it erroneous measurements or calculations, or did we remain woefully ignorant of significant physical processes?
Then in 2009, two major papers were published that closed the majority of the unaccounted for energy in the climate system. The excess energy was being stored as heat in the ocean, specifically the deep ocean. The volume of the Earth's oceans is estimated to be 1.332×109 km3. That is obviously a very large volume within which energy can be stored. What has happened over the course of the past century or so is warmer and warmer water has been forced down to the bottom of the world's oceans. Usually, warm water rises, but the water in question is just above the freezing point of fresh water. At those temperatures, salinity has an increased role in controlling density. Water sinks when sea ice forms because sea ice is made up of only pure water, leaving excess salt in the remaining ocean water. As the salinity increases, the density also increases. Water with higher density than what is surrounding it sinks and then is transported by ocean currents around the world.
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Tue Dec 14, 2010 at 18:17:11 PM MST
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A rather stunning piece of news was released by NASA earlier this week that received absolutely no attention by corporate stenographers. According to NASA, global average temperatures for November 2010 were higher than any other November in recorded history. Furthermore, the likelihood that 2010 will end up as the warmest calendar year on record to date increased. Recent months have seen consecutive 12-month periods rank as the hottest on record already. But people tend to think along calendar date lines, so perhaps 2010 ranking at or near the top of the recorded history list will help spur folks to action.
Let's start with November 2010 by itself. November's global average temperatures were 0.74C above normal (1951-1980), according to NASA. The warmest regions on Earth are exactly where climate models have been projecting the most warmth to occur for years: high latitudes (think Arctic & Antarctic Circles). The past three months have a +0.63C temperature anomaly. And the latest 12-month period (Dec.2009-Nov.2010) had a +0.65C temperature anomaly, the warmest on record.
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