SquareState - climate change

Stupidest Republican of the Day: Oklahoma Senator and Climate Change Denier James Inhofe

Zappatero — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:09:47 GMT

The cynical gamesmanship and lies of James Inhofe of Oklahoma have come home to roost:

Inhofe, of course, believes his state deserves those resources, even though he voted down aid to Hurricane Sandy victims. On MSNBC, Chris Jansing confronted Inhofe about his calling the Sandy aid bill a "slush fund," and the brazen right-winger insisted the two issues shouldn't be linked.
"Let's look at that, that was totally different," Inhofe told Jansing. "They were getting things-for instance that was supposed to be in New Jersey, they had things in the Virgin Islands, they were fixing roads there, they were putting roofs on houses in Washington D.C., everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy taking place. That won't happen in Oklahoma."
Inhofe's answer is too dishonest to fully parse. First of all, there was Sandy damage way beyond New Jersey, including in the Caribbean and Washington D.C. too.

Hurricane Sandy's effects were felt in 24 states and the roof in question was at the Smithsonian Institute, which is in DC.

This ignorant senator is one of the most aggressive deniers of climage change and the massive tornado that just hit his home state will probably change nothing for him:

In a radio interview with Voice of Christian Youth America, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) argued that his belief that global warming is a hoax is biblically inspired. Promoting his book The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, Inhofe told interviewer Vic Eliason on Wednesday that only God can change the climate, and the idea that manmade pollution could affect the seasons is "arrogance":
Well actually the Genesis 8:22 that I use in there is that "as long as the earth remains there will be springtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night." My point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous.

He's not only stupid, but dangerous, and his views are deadly for the citizens he claims to support. Hey, maybe God, by His actions Oklahoma, is telling Oklahomans to stop voting for stupid Republicans like James Inhofe and Tom Coburn to represent them in Washington, DC.

'Safe' Governor embraces Fracking, will face primary

wade norris — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:24:24 GMT

If you were to Google the name of Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper as recently as a couple of months ago, you'd see articles such as this:

John Hickenlooper 2016 Presidential Buzz Continues, Dispite His Best Efforts

But now, if you Google his name, most of the search results are like this:

Gov. John Hickenlooper Tells Senate Committee He Drank Fracking Fluid

...and my own:

CO Democratic Gov. Hickenlooper switching to Republican Party?

For those outside of Colorado, Governor Hickenlooper testified before a panel in Washington D.C. that along with his Halliburton buddies, he 'drank fracking fluid' - a now infamous quote that has been used in countless newspaper articles around the country to defend the 'safety' of Fracking.

Lastly, in response to two cities, Longmont and Fort Collins passing fracking bans - the same Governor took to the airwaves to announce that he would sue any city attempting to ban fracking on behalf of the Oil and Gas industry.

This article is not to further vilify Governor Hickenlooper any further than he has already done by himself, but to point out the Governor's expanding vulnerability to a primary and to get feed back on who would be the best to defeat the Governor and hold the seat for the Democratic party.

And, this is also an article that will sho potential challengers to the Governor how they can chart their path to a primary victory.
Like I mentioned before, I watched and blogged for a 2010 Senate Primary challenge for Michael Bennet by Andrew Romanoff.

That race had several key advantages for Senator Bennet who retained his seat.

1) As an appointed Senator to replace Ken Salazar, he had not really voted on anything controversial so there was no real record to attack.
2) He said little that was controversial - he kept his head down and just stayed out of the spotlight
3) He had the endorsement and campaign support of President Barack Obama - this I believe was the deciding factor on why he was able to fend off a challenge by Andrew Romanoff.

That was a tough battle - as we waited and hoped for the gaffe from Bennet that would give Romanoff an opening - but it never came and Bennet won the primary. Both sides came together and helped Bennet beat a tea party candidate in the General.

This week, ironically, Senator Bennet announced his endorsement of Andrew Romanoff in his Congressional bid against Mike "Obama is not an American" Coffman.

So that's good news.

Like I said - we waited for a gaffe or a chance mistake - but Bennet kept out of sight and uncontroversial.

Now let's look at the Governor's actions - he has embraced fracking - and threatened to sue 2 cities who have banned fracking.

Longmont was the first - and it is a nearby neighbor to Boulder - and many of the environmental activists involved with the ban came from Boulder.

The second city is Ft. Collins - home to Colorado State and a fairly liberal enclave.

My point here is - Fort Collins, Longmont (and by association Boulder) are liberal enclaves - in fact in a general election, the city of Boulder is the counter weight to conservative Colorado Springs.

Hickenlooper might could afford to alienate these liberal places in a General - but alienating these democratic strongholds is a fatal flaw in a primary.

The Governor has basically ceded the majority of the votes to his opponent from these areas in a primary.

Some 'smart' people will say - 'but he has the Oil and Gas industry and their money on his side'
good for him, he will need it.

In Longmont, for instance, the Oil and Gas industry spent half a million dollars to put up negative ads against the November fracking ban ballot initiative, yet lost 60% to 40% against a completely unfunded grassroots people powered movement.

Boulder - Longmont - Fort Collins votes - is also home to some of the finest Microbreweries who depend on clean water for their beer and business model.

So when you pick up a Fat Tire, Left Hand, Dale's Pale Ale, Avery, or Oskar Blues - think of how the Governor is putting those businesses in peril.

And Hickenlooper has not just ticked off his local constituents and businesses - by going to Washington and telling everyone how 'safe' fracking fluid is, he made himself the national figure of Environmentalist's anger.

Whomever challenges him will have not just local donors, but donors from outside of Colorado - and celebrities like Josh Fox and Mark Ruffalo or Matt Damon who have made stopping fracking a number one priority.

And this is not just my opinion -
in a recent article it highlights statements Hickenlooper made further comments to anger voters to the Coloradoan:
Hickenlooper Says State Willing To Compromise Over Fracking Ban In Fort Collins To Avoid Lawsuits

"When you ban fracking, you're telling all those people that paid their money, their savings, their investments to get their mineral rights now they're being taken away," Hickenlooper said to The Coloradoan. "That's called a taking."

His 'compromise' is that these cities might be able to keep the ban in place if they can raise the money to compensate the Oil and Gas companies who are not allowed to frack.

Gee, how generous of him.

Now, for those wondering if this primary is my idea alone, read these comments from the article above:

As far as some of us Democrats are concerned, Hickenlooper need not bother to seek re-election.... wonder if Romanoff, who is not running for the House, would change his mind and seek the governorship instead? As far as this Colorado Democrat is concerned, I would vote for him over "Hickups" any day of the week.

Ridiculous! The governor is willing to compromise with an industry that will destroy our natural resources in the name of what ...jobs? They people will destroy our environment and leave..slam bam etc. Shame on you Hick!

Colorado. I've been watching this online from N.H.. Please be wary of eminent domain, It could be around the corner! Just ask land owners in Texas, who had to sell to TransCanada (thats right Canada) in the name of public good.(Keystone pipeline) THAT IS CALLED TAKING! Oh yeah and "trade secret", thats like pissing in someones pool and calling it "biological property".

I voted once for him and I think it will be the last time.

I will support Ken Salazar and 99.9% of Hispanics will too...if he runs..

Don't worry, we'll be running a primary opponent against Frackenlooper!

Draft Salazar

John's campaign slogan will be "Stick a fork in Hick,he's done"

And it goes on and on....

My environmental friends are wondering if Hickenlooper is acting so brashly against his base because maybe the administration has plans for him... who knows... but he doesn't deserve re-election from us, and I doubt the President will get involved in this race.

So who makes for the best challenger?

My choice as I mentioned before is Morgan Carroll - she introduced several pieces of fracking legislation last year that were killed by the Republican led house. Now she has the chance to re-introduce them in the majority and further protect cities wanting to limit fracking.

There is also Andrew Romanoff just starting his congressional race. Ken Salazar who just stepped down as the Secretary of the Interior. Others might be Congressman Ed Perlmutter or Congresswoman Dianna Degette.

Or it could be someone else - your thoughts?

ALEC alive and well in Colorado - denying Climate Change and promoting Ignorance

Zappatero — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 17:41:31 GMT

Despite a voter suppression scandal that forced many of its biggest members to resign and put into question its motives and tactics, Colorado Republicans are pushing a bill written by the Koch Brother funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that denies climate change and seeks to impose our legislators' ignorance of science and reverence for oil and gas onto Colorado's students:

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) - known by its critics as a "corporate bill mill" - has hit the ground running in 2013, pushing "models bills" mandating the teaching of climate change denial in public school systems.
January hasn't even ended, yet ALEC has already planted its "Environmental Literacy Improvement Act" - which mandates a "balanced" teaching of climate science in K-12 classrooms - in the state legislatures of Oklahoma, Colorado, and Arizona so far this year.

It appears nothing is going to stop ALEC and its Koch Brother founders from using every tool available to promote their own interests in extracting as much energy from the ground as cheaply as possible with the fewest regulations imposed on their free-market business model.

And Colorado Republicans are more than happy to go along:

Colorado's Same Day Affair
One sure sign of a coordinated, ALEC-lead effort is the fact that Colorado's state legislature introduced the ALEC model on the same day as did Oklahoma's. The two states, it's worth noting, share a border on Oklahoma's panhandle.
On Jan. 18, 2013, eight representatives and four senators introduced HB 13-1089, coining the bills the "Academic Freedom Acts."
Paralleling the language in the ALEC model and the Oklahoma bill, the HB 13-1089 aims to "Inform students about scientific evidence and to help students develop critical thinking skills," also recognizing that the teaching of the concept global warming "can cause controversy."
One of the senators co-sponsoring the bill, Rep. Scott Renfroe (R-13) is an ALEC dues-paying member. He's also attended at least one ALEC meeting paid for by Colorado taxpayers, according to the CMD's "Buying Influence" report.
Of the $91,000 dollars he raised for the 2012 election, over $5,000 of it came from the oil, gas and electric utilities industry, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics.
This includes taking money from Chesapeake Energy, Anadarko Petroleum, Williams Companies, and the Colorado Oil and Gas Association.

Tomorrow's election will be a Win/"Win" for anti-science Republicans...Win or Lose

Zappatero — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 17:09:18 GMT

Republicans have been trending anti-science, anti-fact for quite a while now, to the extent that one of our most profound political analysts, Stephen Colbert, was compelled to conclude that facts do indeed have a liberal bias.

Those of you familiar with the fact-based universe that Democrats and Progressives (and maybe some Independents and Republicans) live in might say Stephen was stating the obvious. But for modern day Republicans, facts, reality, and history are shape-shifting pieces of a puzzle that somehow always portray their ideal Father Knows Best America (or the Socialist/Anarchist Hell that they are trying to save you from.) This is not necessarily a religious argument: many scientists and faithful are confident science and faith can peacefully coexist.

What many on this side don't understand is the benefit Republicans and their Funders derive from this ever-present antagonism to facts and how the lies are enabled by a press that wants to appear bipartisan by claiming both side's lies are equal and therefore cancel each other out:

It allows you to lie at will, anywhere and everywhere, thereby rendering your opponent powerless to argue against the lie just spoken and the lie next in line.
Even a hurricane of negative poll numbers for Mitt Romney can be dismissed (we don't need no stinkin' math!) or ignored as Republican supporters go so far as to predict a Romney landslide. This keeps their base engaged and lines up the next outrage over, oh God help us, "voter fraud" and the illegitimate Obama presidency that can be willfully obstructed for 4 more years.
It is exceedingly difficult to maintain your political principles when everything ~~but~~ and the kitchen sink are thrown at them every day by a team of believers that is on point, relentless, and shameless.

These are some of the reasons tomorrow will be a win no matter the crushing defeat Mitt Romney suffers. Romney really wasn't their ideal candidate, and conservatism never fails, it is only failed by soft and squishy leaders like Mitt. The base will remain fired up, ready to give, always fearful Obama will be at the door to take away their guns, eager to hear the next dire prediction from snake-oil salesmen like Grover Norquist and Mike Rosen, Peter Boyles, the Koch Triplets, the NRA, et al., always waiting for the next leader that will take America back to the gloious past that never really existed that is always just out of reach.

Why Design of Carbon Markets Is So Important

WeatherDem — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:09:56 GMT

Various interested parties have written about the efficacy (or lack thereof) with regard to carbon-related market schemes of all sizes and types. Probably one of the more visible programs is the global emissions offset scheme enacted in the wake of the Kyoto Protocol. This is the case for good reason: Kyoto represented the largest effort to date to deal with carbon emissions and related activities at the international level. The short story can be summarized by two competing viewpoints. On the one hand are people who think the Kyoto-scheme was real progress because it did something for the first time. On the other hand, critics claim that the scheme is a failure for any number of reasons, most not actually dealing with real-world facts.

Who's right? Well, as usual, there are valid points made on both sides. It is true that a global market was created where none before it existed. In and of itself, that is probably a good thing. It allows us to monitor how such a program works and make modifications with time if something needs to be tweaked or overhauled. To that point, the critics make a good argument. The scheme very likely isn't working. But critics will leave it at that without examining it in further detail.

I'm going to look at one part of the scheme in a little more detail and explain why the scheme isn't working as efficiently as it should.

Quickly: there are too many credits in the market. In economic terms, there is a drastic oversupply of offset credits. By definition, the market will operate inefficiently. How inefficient is the market? After all, if we are talking about just a little oversupply, we are also talking about small inefficiency. How does 1,000X oversupply grab you? Yes, that number is correct and it is wildly inefficient. This scheme is laughable (or would be if part of a comedy routine). Unfortunately, it is what passes for real-world policy today.
Thomson Reuters Point Carbon estimated the anticipated demand at 11.5 Million metric tons. They further estimated the supply at 13 Billion metric tons. Countries were issued a number of tradable emissions allowances if they agreed to CO2 emissions targets. Therein lies the problem. A first-order approximation to the problem is this: would you buy ice cream cones if you had 1,000X the number of vouchers to get free ice cream cones? No, nobody would buy cones in such a market.

Another important factor in this problem is the following: participating countries have established emissions targets that are higher than business-as-usual emissions projections. In so doing, they completely dismiss the concept of a target. They might as well not identify their targets because they are so high.

The terribly written 2009 U.S. climate and energy bill would have done something similar: the government was going to give away free allowances to industries who would then trade them. The cap (in cap-and-trade) would slowly be ratcheted down in time. But the ratchet was going to happen so slowly that there would always be a massive surplus of credits with which to trade. Businesses could take their sweet time deploying new technologies to pollute less without fear that the government would impose penalties for violating emissions caps.

What should be done? In either case, the credits should not have been doled out for free. Was it a carrot to get industry to sign on to these agreements (or at least not fight them tooth-and-nail publicly)? Yes - albeit an extremely large carrot. The credits should have cost something up front (who gets free stuff at the beginning of any market anyway?) so that they had some real-world value assigned to them. The emissions targets should have been more reality based instead of higher than business-as-usual. Perhaps the programs would not have been successfully implemented (the US version failed for a number of political reasons, not technical reasons), but at least the policy would have been designed to actually accomplish more than a great deal of green-washing.

Instead, the carbon emissions offset market is likely to fail. And ideological critics of such programs will cry far and wide that no such market can ever be successfully implemented. Lay-people that don't understand the nuances and minutiae will readily agree with such an assessment, even though the end result was nearly pre-ordained in the first place.

Alternatively, smaller groups (cities and states in the US, for example) have created smaller markets. They are testing the design of markets in a reasonably non-public setting. I think this is a good thing so that unnecessary politicization of the market does not drown out well-intentioned efforts to figure out the best formulation of markets moving forward. These small-scale efforts are being pursued, for the most part, by parties who are voluntarily interested in them in the first place. There is little coercion or dead weight involved, which should work well in the formulation discovery process. I hope to see additional interested parties join the most successful ventures at a slow rate so that close watch can be kept on market performance and corrective actions taken by a more limited number of parties. With increasing size comes increasing competing interests, which will seriously challenge the successful operation of the market (one primary reason why Kyoto and other massive international efforts have failed to date, in my opinion).

The task of carbon market design and execution is no small feat. It is enormously complex. However, the markets should not be set up at the beginning to fail. They should be designed to succeed. The fact that this statement constitutes a "Duh!" moment tells you a lot about today's policy orientation.

Cross-posted at WeatherDem - the blog.

Call for Climate Change-Policy Paradigm Shift

WeatherDem — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 17:45:32 GMT

Nature Climate Change's most recent issue included a paper by Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows entitled, "A new paradigm for climate change" [subs. req'd]. Kevin works at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, School of Mechanical Civil and Aerospace Engineering and Alice works at the Sustainable Consumption Institute, School of Mechanical Civil and Aerospace Engineering, University of Manchester. The discussion and arguments in the paper aren't exactly novel if you've paid attention to the policy side of the climate change topic but bears examination as much as other works on the climate-policy interface, in which I am very interested.

I think the paper has some serious flaws in its assumptions, which detracts from the policy prescriptions offered. Prime among the flaws is this:

We urgently need to acknowledge that the development needs of many countries leave the rich western nations with little choice but to immediately and severely curb their greenhouse gas emissions

The latter part of this statement simply will not happen, barring additional severe economic distress. The first part represents progress from the scientific community: developing nations want and deserve higher living standards, of which energy is a primary input. But developed nations cannot and will not "immediately and severely curb their greenhouse gas emissions". There is a choice that these nations make every day: their own economies will grow and they will do so with the cheapest energy possible.
The U.S. recently achieved something through price signals that scientists and environmentalists have failed to achieve via policy for a generation: a significant reduction in overall CO2 emissions: 7.7% since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions. This is after Congress failed to get a climate-energy bill passed in 2010. Why did the decrease occur? Because old coal-fired plants (the most polluting type) grew much more uneconomical to operate in the past few years compared to natural gas-fired plants. There is a problem moving forward and that is there is nothing substantially cheaper than natural gas on the scale necessary to further reduce U.S. emissions. Effectively, there is a new baseline from which the U.S. will operate for the next generation. But natural gas, as most readers are familiar, still pollutes far more than renewable energy sources. So U.S. emissions will continue to be quite high and more CO2 will accumulate in the atmosphere.

Despite the early flawed assumption, the papers' authors quite correctly state the following:

[...]any contextual interpretation of the science demonstrates that the threshold of 2°C [increase in average global temperatures] is no longer viable, at least within orthodox political and economic constraints. Against this backdrop, unsubstantiated hope leaves such constraints unquestioned, while at the same time legitimizing a focus on increasingly improbable low-carbon futures and underplaying high-emission scenarios.

I have written many times on the false hope that low- and moderate-emission pathways represent (given the unfortunate reality that our actual emissions are on a substantially different orientation) and lamented that even climate scientists misdirected their energies by rarely analyzing high-emission scenarios, thereby depriving policymakers with the required scope of potential futures from which we choose.

The authors do present this somewhat accurate portrayal:

At the same time as climate change analyses are being subverted to reconcile them with the orthodoxy of economic growth, neoclassical economics has evidently failed to keep even its own house in order. This failure is not peripheral. It is prolonged, deep-rooted and disregards national boundaries, raising profound issues about the structures, values and framing of contemporary society.

Rather than demonizing neoclassical economics, the authors should look for opportunities within such a framework that would actually result in emissions reductions. But the authors' do identify issues that really do lie at the heart of climate policy: the values of contemporary society. If those values were more robustly analyzed and respected for what they were as a foundation to climate policy, we would have made meaningful progress on the issue.

The lack of such effort is evident in one of the authors' concluding paragraphs:

It is in this rapidly evolving context that the science underpinning climate change is being conducted and its findings communicated. This is an opportunity that should and must be grasped. Liberate the science from the economics, finance and astrology, stand by the conclusions however uncomfortable. But this is still not enough. In an increasingly interconnected world where the whole - the system - is often far removed from the sum of its parts, we need to be less afraid of making academic judgements. Not unsubstantiated opinions and prejudice, but applying a mix of academic rigour, courage and humility to bring new and interdisciplinary insights into the emerging era. Leave the market economists to fight among themselves over the right price of carbon - let them relive their groundhog day if they wish. The world is moving on and we need to have the audacity to think differently and conceive of alternative futures.

This thrown gauntlet is full of high-minded rhetoric but short on grasping the realities of the world. I don't know of any climate scientist who is afraid of making academic judgements. But it is folly to accuse skeptics of unsubstantiated opinions and prejudice when advocates for climate activism also display their own set of opinions and prejudice - those opinion and prejudices arise through psychological lenses which themselves are rooted in biological constructs. Insulting one another has done and will continue to not to anything to solve this problem. Nobody has the "truth" market cornered. The "new" paradigm championed by the authors bears remarkable resemblance to other recommendations from legions of climate activists before them. What has such a stance accomplished? Emissions continue to grow, concentrations continue to accumulate, temperatures continue to rise, etc.

Many of the same people who rail against unsubstantiated opinions and prejudice also vehemently dismiss new articulated paradigms. I see nothing in this paper, or many others like it, that advocate for the rapid growth of developing economies based on 21st century technologies and innovations, even though such an effort is clearly needed while developed nations work at finding ways to decarbonize their own economies. Quite simply, this is the least expensive path forward - it leverages opportunity within the economic framework in which we operate. It strikes me as senseless to continue the same fight that has not achieved meaningful decarbonization in the last two generations.

EXTRA! Republican Governor quotes Facts, NWS on hurricane prep and safety

Zappatero — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 16:47:25 GMT

LA Governor Bobby Jindal quotes National Weather Service on CNN.

I had to look up his party to make sure I wasn't seeing things...

Koch Brothers and Others hit the intellectual wall on Climate Change Denial

Zappatero — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 05:58:19 GMT

Well, it looks like all the money in the world can't buy the results you want from every Climate Change Denial scoped study you pay for, even with a Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity, Cato Institute, American Petroleum Institute pedigree. Here's Richard Muller, a Koch funded climate scientist:

Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Someone is going to be pissed:

The single biggest funder of this study is the "Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000)." The Kochs are the leading funder of climate disinformation in the world!

That's chump change for the Kochs. But surely they won't let the scientists get away with these stunning conclusions that contradict every desire of Bill and David and Charles Koch.

Our results show that the average temperature of the earth's land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases.
These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming.

The coordinated smearing of Richard Muller will begin Monday at 8AM EST.

UPDATE/CAVEAT: False Evidence is not necessarily needed to provide support for climate change deniers. It only helps them justify holding a belief clearly counter to reality.

Oklahoma drought worsening.

Republican Senator from Oklahoma James Inhofe writes a book saying God approves of his climate change denial.

Here's Oklahoma's other dumass Senator Tom Coburn:

Environmental scientists from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) are stepping up to defend their research on greenhouse gas emissions in the dairy industry. The defense follows an attack from Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who claims that the researchers' "cow burp" study is a waste of government dough. The conservative Oklahoma Republican ranked the UNH study as number 58 in the "Wastebook" report released last week, his yearly catalog of what he considers the 100 most "wasteful" federally funded projects.
But what Sen. Coburn fails to understand in his glib appraisal of the research is how critical the study is not only to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but also helping farmers and businesses involved with the dairy industry.

And my usual reminder: these are the morans that our two Democratic Senators are dying to be bipartisan with.

2012 U.S. Drought: Impacts & Historical Context

WeatherDem — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 20:14:49 GMT

The National Climate Data Center, in its summary of drought conditions as of the end of June 2012, reported that 55% of the contiguous U.S. was experiencing moderate to extreme drought, as the graphic below shows. This is the largest percentage since December 1956 when 58% of the U.S. experienced similar conditions. The Palmer Drought Index, whose data base goes back 112 years, is relied upon for drought comparisons before 2000.

Figure 1. Drought conditions across the United States as of early July 2012 from the Drought Monitor.
In my last post on drought, I stated, "There's no widespread crisis to speak of yet, but inhabitants as well as policymakers should monitor conditions as the year progresses." Well, the NCDC established the case for a widespread crisis with their latest summary, which was not issued until after my post. Crops and livestock are now being negatively affected. The following two charts show corn and soybean prices. The recent peaks are due to worsening conditions across the breadbasket and the USDA's recent crop downgrade.

Figure 2. Corn (top) and soy (bottom) prices and volume charts for the past 12 months.

(h/t Bonddad)

1988 was also a very bad year for corn in the U.S. Here is a chart from the USDA comparing 1988 and 2012 corn ratings:

Figure 3. Comparison of corn ratings (good + excellent) as determined by the USDA as of early July 2012.

You can see that conditions in 1988 worsened earlier in the year (solid blue line @30% ~3 weeks before the solid yellow line). It remains to be seen how bad conditions eventually get in 202.

So conditions are the worst since Dec. 1956. How else do today's conditions compare to earlier droughts? The following graphic from USA Today helps put them in context:

Figure 4. Comparison of extensive drought in U.S. history.

The percentage of the country in moderate to severe drought in June 2012 is the sixth highest since 1900. The 1930s are well known as Dust Bowl years. Conditions aren't expected to get that bad, even if drought were to dominate the area for the next few years, primarily because of changes in farming practices. Topsoil was easily scoured from the earth in the 1930s and was moved around by winds, sometimes for dozens or hundreds of miles, hence the name 'Dust Bowl'. The droughts of the mid-1950s were also quite extensive. The U.S. is fortunate that the return period of these conditions was ~55 years.

I've also written in my drought posts that the current drought, extensive and intense as it is, is not without historical precedent and that a clear climate change linkage is not available at this time. With generally warmer temperatures and more variable precipitation patterns, one might conclude that drought would be more likely to occur in recent years than in the 1900s. As the USA Today chart shows, that clearly hasn't happened. The conditions in 2012 are more closely related to the double-dip La Niña that just ended:

Figure 5. Time series of temperature anomalies in the NINO3.4 region. Positive values for 5 consecutive 3-month periods correspond to El Niño events while similar periods with negative values correspond to La Niña events.

This drought is very serious and everybody should treat it as such Part of that statement is acknowledging the lack of a clear anthropogenic climate change signal at this point in time. Conditions aren't expected to significantly improve in the next couple of weeks. The extent and intensity of drought can expand and worsen within that time. We can also expect higher prices for food starting next year and into 2014 - additional economic headwinds that the U.S. can ill-afford at this time.

Research: Sea-Level Rise in Response to Warming Climate

WeatherDem — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 23:38:50 GMT

From the top, I want to include important context for the research results I am presenting. This research is based on peak warming of only either 1.5°C or 2°C. It is my educated opinion that such goals are unrealistic. Prevention of warming past 2°C is no longer a viable option based on the globe's history of burning carbon-intensive fossil fuels as well as the medium- to long-term future, which doesn't promise much of a difference. Furthermore, as I have stated numerous times in the past year, policy discussion would be better served if scientists would conduct research on developments that are much likelier to occur and not the world they want to see (i.e., higher vs. lower emissions scenarios). That said, this research fulfills an important role in the overall discussion because I think some of the results can be used as a "floor" - conditions are likely to reach higher magnitudes than those found in this and similar papers.

Michiel Schaeffer, William Hare, Stefan Rahmstorf & Martin Vermeer's Nature paper was published on June 24, 2012. They examined sea-level rise in response to warming scenarios using a semi-empirical model. By 2100, global sea-level rise would be ~60cm above the 2000 level if global GHG emissions were zeroed by 2016. This is an obvious fantasy world, but it provides a useful benchmark for other scenarios the scientists examined. The reason sea-level rise would continue through the 21st century even if we haled emissions completely in the next 3-4 years is the response of the climate system to the anthropogenic forcing imparted on it through the 20th and early 21st centuries. If 1.5°C or 2°C warming is not exceeded, global sea-level rise would be 75-80cm above the 2000 level. The authors also report that unmitigated emissions could result in 100cm rise above 2000 levels. It is important to note that 20th century sea level rise has been estimated to be ~20cm. It doesn't require much thought to realize that the rate of sea-level rise has increased throughout the 20th century and continues to do so in the 21st. Moreover, it is clear that since we will most likely warm beyond 2°C, the 75-100cm projection can be viewed as a reasonable estimate for a "floor": actual sea-level rise could be greater than this.
The authors go on to estimate global sea-level rise by 2300. Since the world won't end in 2100, nor our civilizations (though they will be forced to adapt to a changing world), projections out to 2300 are useful to gain an understanding of the long-term effects of our actions. By 2300 a 1.5°C scenario could result in peak sea level at a median estimate of 1.5m above the 2000 level. The 50% probability scenario for 2°C warming would see sea level reaching 2.7m above the 2000 level and still rising at about double the present-day rate.

That last sentence is important to understand because of 2 factors. The first is the 50% probability descriptor and the second is the extreme difficulty in keeping warming at or below 2°C. Even if we were to keep warming at or below 2°C, there are realistic scenarios in which sea-level rise exceed 2.7m in the year 2300. Beyond that, 2°C acts more as a floor in the real world than a ceiling in the fantasy world that continues to garner research focus. Our historical emissions values were closer to the higher end of the IPCC AR4's range than the lower - or put another way, 4°C looks likelier to occur by 2100 than 2°C at this point because our emissions more closely resemble the A1B or A2 scenario. The following graph shows the AR4's global surface warming projections by scenario. Note that the A2 scenario didn't run all the way to the year 2300, but the B1 and A1B scenarios were. The equilibrium temperature under the A2 scenario is obviously higher than that of the A1B scenario, but left unprojected in previous work.

Figure 1. IPCC AR4 WGI global surface warming observations (20th century; black) and projections based on SRES scenarios (21st - 24th centuries; color). The average warming is indicated by bold lines in each color and the range of projections per scenario are the lighter-shaded envelope surrounding the bold lines. The number of individual proxy datasets and model projections are located under the curves (e.g., 17 A2 runs, 21 A1B runs between 2000 and 2100, etc.)

The Schaeffer paper includes the following graph for sea-level rise (SLR) through the 21st century:

Figure 2. Rate of sea-level rise (SLR; left) and SLR projections (right) between 2000 and 2100. The rate of SLR after zeroed emissions is shown by the gray dashed line (Zero 2016). The black solid line and accompanying 90% uncertainty range represents the authors' results from least mitigation while the blue line and accompanying 90% uncertainty range represents the results of highest mitigation.

And here is the paper's graph for SLR from model year 1000 through 2300:

Figure 3. Rate of SLR (left) and SLR projections (right) from the year 1000 through the year 2300. 90% uncertainty ranges are shown for only two scenarios, focusing on the lowest and highest temperature-goal scenarios. Error bars on the right-hand side as in Fig 2.

The right-hand-side of Figure 3 shows that for the lowest temperature-goal scenario, sea-level begins to stabilize around the year 2300 at +150cm from the 2000 level. Unfortunately, the highest temperature-goal scenario does not result in stabilized sea level by the same point in time. Indeed, SLR continues well into the future. I will point out again that we are likely to exceed the authors' temperature-goal scenario by a significant margin. What does that mean? The globe is likely to experience increasing SLR rates, resulting in higher sea-level values sooner than what is projected here and in other similar studies.

A few words on what this means in a societal context. Put simply, most modern, developed societies are not prepared to handle the sea-level rise that has already occurred or that which is occurring today and in the near future. The costs of doing so are relatively high and are becoming higher every year (at least in the US) given our lack of long-term planning when zoning along coastal regions. Populations have exploded along US coasts during the 2nd half of the 20th century, and as the country has gotten increasingly wealthy, more "stuff" that is worth more money is situated in areas that will be increasingly affected by SLR in coming decades. Developing countries also have large populations near coastlines, but SLR will impact them differently. Those populations' direct livelihoods are threatened, which will likely result in mass migration as the ocean swallows miles of land.

There are a very small number of countries who are doing anything meaningful about this situation, in my opinion. Denmark and England are two that come to mind most readily, although I'm sure other examples exist. And really, it is communities, towns, and a few cities that are preparing, not their national governments.

Since we are ill-equipped to handle today's SLR rate, it follows that we are even less prepared to deal with tomorrow's SLR rates and subsequent sea-level. Mitigation is not going to happen anytime soon, so adaptation strategies will move to the fore. How communities plan and execute responses will go a long way in determining who ends up affected and how much cost will fall to local populations vs. national populations. Given the right-wing's insistence on austerity and their "you're on your own" attitude, I think we will witness hardships encountered by individuals and their communities for a while before these situations are addressed at national levels. I also think countries with weak national governments will see the greatest potential for geopolitical strife. Lifestyles in developed countries will have to change, but probably to a lesser degree.

As we move into the future, this conversation would be better informed with projections resulting from emissions scenarios that more closely resemble historical values and likely future pathways. Of course, there are many aspects of models that deserve simultaneous improvement (e.g., all first-order forcings and feedbacks) so that real-world processes are more accurately represented. But I think policy discussions will benefit in the short-term from more realistic emissions pathways as a starting point.

Cross-posted at WeatherDem - the blog.

7th Day of 100+F Heat In Denver, CO; June 2012 Hottest On Record

WeatherDem — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 22:22:14 GMT

It's official: June 2012 was the hottest June on record in Denver, CO (dating back to 1872) with an average temperature of 75F, 7.6F above normal!

Yesterday's high of 101F added to the total number of days of 100F+ temperatures: to date, there are now 7. Last week, there were 5 days in a row of 100F+ heat, matching the all-time record for Denver. The streak included 2 105F readings, which tied for the all-time hottest temperature recorded for Denver. There was also a 100F+ reading a few days prior to that streak. For completeness, I want to point out that the 27th through 30th of June weren't much cooler: it was 97, 97, 98, and 99 on those four days, so we didn't miss 100 by much.

Here are a few pictures demonstrating the intensity and extent of the heat that not only affected Denver, but much of the High Plains prior to the impacts east of the Mississippi over the weekend:

Figure 1. Contour plot of surface maximum temperatures for July 1, 2012.

Figure 2. Plot of surface maximum temperatures by station for July 1, 2012.

Figure 3. Contour plot of surface maximum temperatures for June 30, 2012.

Figure 4. Contour plot of surface maximum temperatures for June 29, 2012.

Figure 5. Plot of surface maximum temperatures by station for June 26, 2012. This is one of the two dates that Denver's temperature tied for the all-time recorded high of 105F.

Context

Last year, there were 50 consecutive days of 90F+ maximum temperatures at Denver, which tied for 9th-longest in our recorded history. With 7 additional days, it would have been the 3rd-longest streak; 11 more days would have tied the longest streak on record, set in 2000. Note also that 6 of the 11 longest streaks have occurred in the 21st century! Normally, Denver experiences ~34 days of 90F+ maximum temperatures.

So far this year, we are in the middle of a 10-day streak. Today, the temperature has already been over 90 for over 4 hours (now 2:30P local) and the forecast calls for 90F+ for at least the next 5 days.

I couldn't find records on the average number of 100F days in Denver in a year. I would venture a guess and say that is because the number is less than one. I'll do some more digging and see if I can find out one way or the other.

Climate Projections

It wasn't that long ago that I first saw projections of potential future climate maps for the US and didn't think I could imagine what it would be to live through such conditions. I'm sure there are many people who either similarly couldn't imagine it because it hasn't happened yet or who are simply unaware of such projections. Take a look at the following graphic:

Figure 6. Projection for 2090-2099 of the number of weeks per year where maximum daily temperatures exceed 100F. This projection used the A1FI SRES scenario, which best represents the globe's current emissions path.

For the sake of conversation, I will assume that Denver has so far this year experienced 1 week (7 days) of 100F+ temperatures, and will further assume that no additional 100F days will occur in the rest of the year. Under the A1FI scenario, by the end of this century, such a year would be considered relatively cool!

This shift toward more extreme temperatures can also be represented in this graphical manner:

This graphic shows that the increase in average temperature does not have to be that large in magnitude in order for a sizable number of events at the tail of a distribution (e.g., temperature) to occur.

Millions of people are currently without power (due to violent thunderstorms) and are experiencing 100F+ temperatures in the eastern US. How many more summers like this do they want to have? They're going to find out, that's very nearly certain now.

State of the Poles - June 2012: Arctic Ice Extent Below Normal; Antarctic Ice Near Clim. Norm

WeatherDem — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 16:26:00 GMT

The state of global polar sea ice area in early June 2012 has once again fallen below climatologically normal conditions (1979-2009). Arctic sea ice loss is primarily responsible for this change in condition since just last month. Arctic sea ice melted quickly in May because it was thinner than usual; Antarctic sea ice has refrozen at a near normal rate during the late austral autumn. Polar sea ice recovered from an extensive deficit of -2 million sq. km. area three months ago to a +750,000 sq. km. anomaly one to two months ago before falling back to a -1 million sq. km. deficit. After starting the year at a deficit last year, sea ice area spent an unprecedented length of time near the -2 million sq. km. deficit in the modern era in 2011. Generally poor environmental conditions established and maintained this condition, predominantly across the Arctic last year. The last time global sea ice area remained near 19 million sq. km. through May was in 2007, when the Arctic extent hit its modern day record minimum.
Arctic Ice

According to the NSIDC, weather conditions during the latter part of the previous winter and spring were less conducive for Arctic sea ice freezing on the Atlantic side of the Arctic while conditions were more conducive than usual for freezing on the Pacific side. Sea ice melt during May was more than normal: 1.62 million sq. km. instead of 1.38 million sq. km. As such, May′s extent was below average for the month in the satellite record. Arctic sea ice extent on in May averaged 13.13 million sq. km. Barents and Kara Sea ice remained very much below normal, more so than in recent years. The Bering Sea, which saw ice extent growth due to anomalous northerly winds in previous months, instead witnessed above normal conditions. Overall, near surface temperatures were warmer than average across the Arctic Ocean.

In terms of longer, climatological trends, Arctic sea ice extent in April has decreased by -2.3% per decade. This rate is lowest in the spring months than the late summer months. Note that this rate also uses 1979-2000 as the climatological normal. There is no reason to expect this rate to change significantly (more or less negative) any time soon. Additional low ice seasons will continue. Some years will see less decline than other years (like this past year) - but the multi-decadal trend is clear: negative. The specific value for any given month during any given year is, of course, influenced by local and temporary weather conditions. But it has become clearer every year that humans are establishing a new normal in the Arctic with respect to sea ice. This new normal will continue to have far-reaching implications on the weather in the mid-latitudes, where most people live.

Arctic Pictures and Graphs

The following graphic is a satellite representation of Arctic ice as of April 28, 2012:

Figure 1 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Northern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20120428.

Compare this with June 7th's satellite representation, also centered on the North Pole:

Figure 2 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Northern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20120607.

The sea ice in the Bering Sea, as mentioned above, formed more quickly and to a further southern extent than is normally seen, but has largely melted already due to the ice's young age and thin depth. What remained missing this winter and early spring was the sea ice north of Scandinavia. This is the result of anomalously warm waters from the Gulf Stream being drawn further north than is normal. This is due to the positive AO index & NAO index during the last boreal winter and spring. As a side note, this phenomenon combined with the most recent, moderate La Niña in the Pacific Ocean has led to Dec-May being anomalously warm and dry for most of the U.S. Indeed, this year has been the warmest Jan-May period on record in the US, as I will detail in a separate post.

Overall, the health of the remaining ice pack is not healthy, as the following graph of Arctic ice volume from the end of May demonstrates:

Figure 3 - PIOMAS Arctic sea ice volume time series through May 2012.

As the graph shows, volume hit a record minimum earlier in 2011 before returning to the -2 standard deviation envelope. I understand that most readers don't have an excellent handle on statistics, but conditions between -1 and -2 standard deviations are rare and conditions outside the -2 standard deviation threshold (see the line below the shaded area on the graph above) are incredibly rare: the chances of 2 of them occurring in 2 subsequent years under normal conditions are very, very remote indeed. Hence my assessment that "normal" conditions in the Arctic are shifting from what they were in the past few centuries. Note further that after conditions returned to near the -1 standard deviation envelope in late 2011/early 2012, volume has once again fallen rapidly outside of the -2 standard deviation area. The chances that this would happen three separate times in three consecutive years is exceptionally remote. That means that natural conditions are not the likely cause; rather, another cause is much more likely to be responsible for this behavior.

Switching back from volume to area, take a look at May's areal extent time series data:

Figure 4 - NSIDC Arctic sea ice extent time series through early June 2012.

This winter allowed the extent to do something it had not done for the most recent handful of winters: a return of ice extent to within the -2 standard deviation envelope. Indeed, the extent in April briefly matched average conditions before a relatively warm spell melted ice quickly in mid-April. The reason for this is a shift in wind conditions: speed and direction both changed from late winter through this last month. Those winds piled sea ice up instead of pushing it apart. The disadvantage: ice extent decreased, as seen in Figure 4. The advantage: ice volume grew, as seen in Figure 3. The effect on this September's minimum extent will indicate how helpful the early season winds were in building sea ice that doesn't melt every year back up. During May, as I wrote above, melting occurred at a slightly faster rate than normal, resulting in a return to near-record low extent conditions.

Occasionally, I also like to include a supplemental time series graph that the NSIDC report contains. Here is this month's supplemental graph:

Figure 5 - NSIDC Arctic sea ice extent time series of ice extent conditions comparing previous years' data and 2012 data through May.

This graph contains all of the same data as the previous graph and adds the time series lines from the previous 5 winters. As you can see, extent varies during the same month from year to year. The recent decline in extent, caused by a change in wind direction and speed, has reduced Arctic ice extent back to ~13 million sq. km., which is well below normal for May. The past three winters also saw similar magnitude reductions through May, although the starting and ending values were obviously different. Despite these differences in subsequent years, the minimum ice extent values were quite similar: at or near the record low set in 2007. Will fall 2012 be any different or will the surge in ice growth on the Pacific side of the Arctic help to stave off the worst effects seen in the past five years?

Antarctic Pictures and Graphs

Here is a satellite representation of Antarctic sea ice conditions from April 28th:

Figure 6 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Southern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20120607.

Compare that graphic with the same view from June 7th:

Figure 7 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Southern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20120607.

Ice gain is easily visible around the continent. As a reminder, this is largely and somewhat confusingly due to the ozone depletion that took place over the southern continent in the 20th century. This depletion has caused a colder southern polar stratosphere than it otherwise would be, reinforcing the polar vortex over the Antarctic Circle. That vortex has helped keep cold, stormy weather in place over Antarctica that might not otherwise would have occurred to the same extent and intensity. As the "ozone hole" continues to recover during this century, the effects of global warming will become more clear in this region, especially if ocean warming continues to melt sea-based Antarctic ice from below. For now, we should perhaps consider the lack of global warming signal due to lack of ozone as relatively fortunate.

Finally, here is the Antarctic sea ice extent time series from June 7th:

Figure 8 - NSIDC Antarctic sea ice extent time series through early June 2012.

Antarctic sea ice extent had remained above average to some extent through the austral summer and early spring, which is good news. The difference in conditions from the first part of 2011 to the similar time period in 2012 is obvious: NSIDC measured last year's extent near the bottom of the standard deviation envelope while this year's extent is much healthier. Despite the shift in preceding conditions, extent in May 2011 and 2012 returned to normal.

Errata

Here are my State of the Poles posts from May and March.

You can find NSIDC's June report here.

Cross-posted at WeatherDem - the blog.

Research: Ocean Heat Content Continued to Rise Through 2010

WeatherDem — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 17:49:41 GMT

In a follow-up to a previously written paper, Levitus et al. 2012 (subs. req'd) shows that the world's oceans continued to absorb heat through 2010:

Two interesting things to point out: most of the heat from 1990 through 2005 stayed in the 0-700m layer (visually subtract the 700-2000m from the 0-2000m time series: the lines diverge), then most of the heat from 2005 through 2010 went into the 700-2000m layer (the lines didn't diverge nearly as quickly as before).
From the paper's abstract:

The heat content of the World Ocean for the 0-2000 m layer increased by 24.0±1.9x1022 J (±2S.E.) corresponding to a rate of 0.39 W m-2 (per unit area of the World Ocean) and a volume mean warming of 0.09º C.

From the paper's discussion:

Using model simulations based on AOGCM simulations, Dommenget [2009] concluded that "continental warming due to anthropogenic forcing (e. g., the warming at the end of the last century or future climate change scenarios) is mostly (80%-90%) indirectly forced by the contemporaneous ocean warming, not directly by local radiative forcing." Thus even if greenhouse gas emissions were halted today than [sic] regardless of the residence time of the carbon dioxide in today's atmosphere, the ocean would continue to heat the atmosphere [Wetherald et al., 2001] .

All the major ocean basins (Pacific, Atlantic, Indian) saw increased heat content at almost every latitude, according to the Argo dataset. The reason the ocean would continue to heat the atmosphere should be obvious from the paper's figure above as well as this related figure:

The surface warming to date (0.74°C or 1.37°F - IPCC AR4 WGI) is but a small fraction of the surface warming that will result from the heat imbalance currently affecting the planet. Additional greenhouse gas emissions will lead to further heating and warming.

Roger Pielke Sr. (a climate scientist) commented on this paper here. He talks about the difference between the recorded heat content and a statement made by NASA's Jim Hansen in 2005 that is worth reading to keep everything in context. The "truth" is probably somewhere in the middle of all of these viewpoints.

State of the Poles - Jan 2012: Arctic Ice Near Historic Lows; Antarctic Ice Above Average

WeatherDem — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:04:34 GMT

The state of global polar sea ice area in early January 2012 has temporarily returned to climatologically normal conditions (1979-2009). Arctic sea ice has recovered very quickly after starting the freeze season slowly and Antarctic sea ice has melted more slowly than is normal for this time of year. Put another way, polar sea ice has recovered from an extensive deficit of -2 million sq. km. area a couple of months ago to no anomaly today. That said, sea ice area spent an unprecedented length of time near the -2 million sq. km. deficit in the modern era. Generally poor environmental conditions established and maintained this condition, predominantly across the Arctic, this year.
Arctic Ice

According to the NSIDC, weather conditions this fall were slightly less conducive for Arctic sea ice melt than was the case in 2007, the year that witnessed the record low extent. As such, December 2011′s extent was the 3rd lowest on record. Additionally, Arctic sea ice extent on December 31st measured just 13.25 million sq. km. That was only 561,000 sq. km. more than the 2010 record low extent. Because the dipole anomaly didn't set up in the same way or with the same intensity as in 2007, Arctic sea ice extent has measured slightly higher than record minima in recent months. We can't count on these types of weather variations in the future, of course. Another reason ice extent was low but didn't set another record was the difference in ice motion: sea ice was likelier to remain in the Arctic in 2011 than in 2007 or 2010.

Since September's record low, Arctic sea ice has refrozen rapidly. December's sea ice extent increased by 2.37 million sq. km. (vs. 1.86 million sq. km. average). This situation mimics that of recent years after ice extent reaches low values in September and the sun sets for the winter. The ocean released massive amounts of heat to the atmosphere, especially this fall since the AO index has been extremely positive. This has caused cold air from the continents to be bottled up in a stronger vortex than normal and has drawn heat from the Arctic Ocean as it passes over the warmer fluid.

In terms of longer, climatological trends, Arctic sea ice extent in December has decreased by -3.5% per decade These rates are more negative this year than the previous year (a trend that has continued). These rates also use 1979-2000 as the climatological normal. There is no reason to expect these rates to change significantly any time soon. Additional low ice seasons will continue. The specific value for any given month during any given year is, of course, influenced by local and temporary weather conditions. But it has become clearer every year that the establishment of a new normal in the Arctic is occurring. This new normal will continue to have far-reaching implications on the weather in the mid-latitudes, where most people live.

Arctic Pictures and Graphs

The following graphic is a satellite representation of Arctic ice as of December 12, 2011:

Figure 1 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Northern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20111212.

Compare this with January 7th's satellite representation, also centered on the North Pole:

Figure 2 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Northern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20120107.

Hudson Bay finally froze over completely. The sea ice in the Bering Sea formed normally. What is missing is the sea ice north of Scandinavia. This is the result of anomalously warm waters from the Gulf Stream being drawn further north than is normal. This is due to the exceptionally positive AO index during the past couple of months. As a side note, this phenomenon combined with the moderate La Nina in the Pacific Ocean has led to January being a warm and dry month for most of the U.S. so far. The AO index is returning to more normal values now, so cold air outbreaks will become more likely in February.

Overall, the health of the remaining ice pack is not healthy, as the following graphsof Arctic ice volume from the end of December demonstrates:

Figure 3 - PIOMAS Arctic sea ice volume time series through December 2011.

As the graph shows, volume hit a record minimum earlier in 2011 before returning to the -2 standard deviation envelope. I know most folks don't have a very good handle on statistics, but conditions between -1 and -2 standard deviations are rare and conditions outside the -2 standard deviation threshold (see the line below the shaded area on the graph above) are incredibly rare: the chances of 2 of them occurring in 2 subsequent years under normal conditions are very, very remote. Hence the assessment that "normal" conditions in the Arctic are shifting from what they were in the past few centuries.

Switching back from volume to area, take a look at December's areal extent time series data:

Figure 4 - NSIDC Arctic sea ice extent time series through early January 2012.

As you can see, the sea ice extent has spent all of the fall and early winter well outside of the -2 standard deviation region, just as it has for 5 winters in a row. It cannot be stated otherwise: these conditions are not indicative of a healthy system.

Antarctic Pictures and Graphs

Here is a satellite representation of Antarctic sea ice conditions from December 12th:

Figure 5 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Southern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20111212.

Compare that graphic with the same view from January 7th:

Figure 6 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Southern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20120107.

Ice loss is easily visible around the continent. High ice concentrations remain well into the austral spring east of the Antarctic Peninsula (the land mass that "points" to South America). Conditions of Antarctic sea ice remain good this year.

Here is the Antarctic sea ice extent time series from December:

Figure 7 - NSIDC Antarctic sea ice extent time series through early January 2012.

After conditions caused a slowdown in melt in late November and early December, the remainder of December and January was marked by normal ice melt rates. At this point, no news is good news. The Arctic is providing more than enough excitement for the time being.

Errata

Here are my State of the Poles posts from December and August.

You can find NSIDC's January report here.

Climate Change Basics - Energy & Projections

WeatherDem — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 17:51:11 GMT

In July, I wrote a post that laid the groundwork for the discussion of climate change basics: Gases, Forcing & Surface Temperature. This post follows onto that initial post by discussing energy within Earth's climate system. As in that post, I will focus on the results in the IPCC's AR4. There is a wealth of additional results in the scientific literature since the 2007 Report and I will share some of those in future posts. In other words, the IPCC information will be used as a baseline. This post is a little long, but I think it's worth reading in its entirety.

Energy Content

First, here are two views of the energy content in the climate system. The first is from the IPCC's WGI Technical Summary:

Source: IPCC AR4 Figure TS.15. Energy content changes in different components of the Earth for two periods (1961-2003 (blue) and 1993-2003 (burgundy)).
This graph shows the distribution of extra energy that the climate system has accumulated due to the radiative imbalance created by the dramatic increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution. Note which component has stored the most energy: the oceans - far more than the continents or atmosphere. The reason for this is simple: the heat capacity of water (see here and here) vs. the heat capacity of land or the atmosphere. Water can absorb 1000 times the energy that the atmosphere can. While land and near-surface temperatures have been increasing, that increase has been greatly moderated by the ability of water to absorb the energy as the atmosphere interacts with it. Put another way, if water wasn't so effective at absorbing energy, more heat would be present in the atmosphere today than it is. This heat absorption has implications for our future, which I will come back to later.

This information can be viewed in another way:

Graph courtesy of Skeptical Science: "Total Earth Heat Content [anomaly]" from 1950 (Murphy et al. 2009). Ocean data taken from Domingues et al. 2008.

Again, total ocean heating in the past 50 years exceeds by a large margin the heating that has taken place on land and in the atmosphere. Globally averaged surface temperatures are 0.74C (+-0.18C) warmer as of 2005 than they were in 1906 (IPCC). What the excess heat content in the ocean means is over the course of thousands of years into the future, global temperatures will continue to rise until the excess energy is re-radiated back to space. The climate system will find a new stable state eventually, but as far as our species and today's ecosystems are concerned, temperatures will continue to rise: the physics demand nothing else.

Anthropogenic Forcing

Next, let's look at how the temperature observations can be explained:

Source: IPCC WGI Technical Summary Figure TS.23: (a) Global mean surface temperature anomalies relative to the period 1901 to 1950, as observed (black line) and as obtained from simulations with both anthropogenic and natural forcings. The thick red curve shows the multi-model ensemble mean and the thin lighter red curves show the individual simulations. Vertical grey lines indicate the timing of major volcanic events. (b) As in (a), except that the simulated global mean temperature anomalies are for natural forcings only. The thick blue curve shows the multi-model ensemble mean and the thin lighter blue curves show individual simulations. Each simulation was sampled so that coverage corresponds to that of the observations.

This graph (b - bottom portion) shows that natural forcings alone cannot explain the observed temperature trend since 1900. Significant divergence starts to occur starting in the 1960s and gets more extreme with time. If anthropogenic forcings (i.e. human causes) are included in simulations, the temperature record can be explained. This provides solid evidence that our greenhouse gas pollution is having a demonstrable effect on the climate system. That effect will not go away until our pollution and, as I'll discuss in further detail in a future post, our land use changes stop.

Model Projections

A great deal of discussion in the global warming debate has centered around the ability of models to accurately project the state of future conditions. So let's take a quick look at how previous modeling efforts have performed with time:

Source: IPCC WGI Technical Summary Figure TS.26.

What does this graph so? A number of things. The three previous IPCC Assessment Reports' trends and ranges are the first thing to notice (colored triangles). The 2nd and 3rd AR underestimated the warming from 1995-2005 while the 1st AR captured the observed warming (black line) within its range. Were any of them perfect? No, but that's not the point of the projections. The projections are designed to give policymakers a sense of the range of future conditions that are expected. Next, note the trend lines projected by the different SRES scenarios to the right of the year 2000. The commitment line (orange) is the projected response by the climate system to the greenhouse forcing already in place, based on the assumption that GHG and aerosol concentrations are held constant at their levels from 2000 forward (i.e., no future increase or decrease). We already know that GHG and aerosol concentrations have changed since 2000. Note that the effects on the climate system by aerosols continue to be examined by research scientists and currently constitute the largest uncertainty in the radiative forcing of the climate system. It doesn't make that much difference for the purposes of this graph, but the A1FI scenario-based projections (and a few others) isn't indicated. This makes sense from the following perspective: the difference between the A1FI scenario and those included in this graph aren't very large until the 4th quarter of this century. Despite this, the problem I have with the presentation of scenarios has to do with our current emissions path:

As this graph shows, actual emissions starting from 2000 was within the small range encompassed by the SRES scenarios. By 2004 however, actual emissions were at the upper range of the SRES scenarios. The dip in 2008-2009 was due solely to the economic collapse of those years - the most polluting and most costly activities were shut down first. As economies around the world started to recover, those activities came right back online and emissions jumped by the highest year-over-year amount in history. The end result is this: emissions are closer to the A2 or A1FI scenarios than they are the A1B or B1 scenarios in the previous graph. As a follow-on to what I wrote above, the AR4 projections are holding up very well with time, as should be expected. Back to the problem I have with the previous graph: given the actual emissions history, policymakers will be better served by work that concentrates on emissions scenarios closer in nature to the A2 and A1FI scenarios.

SRES Warming Projections

The models used to project future climate conditions overall have done fairly well and have gotten better with time, even though they're missing critical feedback processes and some radiative forcing information. With that knowledge in hand, what do the SRES warming projections look like?

Source: IPCC AR4 Technical Summary Figure TS.32.

The dark lines are the means of 20th-century simulation (black) and 4 IPCC scenarios (orange - commitment; blue - B1; green - A1B; red - A2). The lighter colors surrounding the mean represent the +-1 standard deviation range of values about the respective means. The zero-reference line is the 1980-1999 base period in this graph. The number of models run per period are shown beneath the curves. This has serious implications for evaluating climate post-2100 as the commitment and A2 scenario were not run past 2100 while the B1 and A1B scenarios were run out to 2300. Both of the latter sets of simulations showed continually increasing temperatures even out to the year 2300 and likely beyond. As discussed above, our historical emissions through 2010 are more closely characterized by the A2 scenario than the B1 or A1B scenarios. As seen in the TS.32 graph, global temperatures rapidly warm through 2100 and would likely continue to do so well beyond 2100. This is the most likely path that actual global temperatures will take given the lack of action to appropriately change our influence on the climate. Moreover, I will once again take the opportunity to point out that these scenarios more likely underestimate the eventual warming and overestimate it due to the lack of inclusion of feedback processes in the model simulations. Hundreds of peer-reviewed papers have been written since the AR4 was produced that have demonstrated this to be the case.

For reasons I will discuss in future posts, we will be unable to reach the emissions reduction targets required by the B1 scenario - one of the better cases studied. However, for purposes of context, let us assume that such an achievement can and will be made. On top of the 0.74C warming over 1906 average temperatures already recorded, and additional 1.8C warming over 2000 temperatures are likely to occur under the B1 scenario. The unattainable B1 scenario means that the much-publicized target of no-more-than 2C warming is very unlikely to be met. I will have more information on that in future posts as well.

Cross-posted at WeatherDem - the blog.

State of the Poles - Dec 2011: Arctic Ice Continues Low; Antarctic Ice Above Average

WeatherDem — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 17:36:46 GMT

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.
Arctic Ice

According to the NSIDC, weather conditions this fall were slightly less conducive for Arctic sea ice melt than was the case in 2007, when the record low extent was recorded. As such, 2011's extent was the 2nd lowest on record. Specifically, Arctic sea ice extent measured on 4.33 million sq. km. on September 9th. That was only 160,000 sq. km. more than the 2007 record low extent (about 3.7% of the minimum extent measured this year, a very small difference by comparison). For additional perspective, 2011's minimum was 2.38 million sq. km. less than the 1979-2000 average yearly minimum. My prediction that 2011 wouldn't miss 2007's record by much unfortunately turned out to be true. One reason 2011's minimum didn't set a record was because the dipole anomaly didn't set up in the same way or with the same intensity as 2007's. We can't count on these types of weather variations to disallow record lows in the future, of course. Another reason was the difference in ice motion: sea ice was likelier to remain in the Arctic in 2011 than in 2007.

Since September's record low, Arctic sea ice has refrozen rather rapidly. September's average sea ice extent was 4.61 million sq. km. (vs. 7.04 million sq. km. average). October's average sea ice extent was 7.10 million sq. km. (vs. 9.29 million sq. km. normally). November's average was 10.01 million sq. km. (vs. 11.31 million sq. km.). During the fall, sea ice extent remained near record lows set per month in years past (2007 & 2010).

In terms of longer, climatological trends, Arctic sea ice extent in September has decreased by -12% per decade; in October has decreased by -6.6% per decade; in November by -4.7% per decade. These rates are more negative this year than the previous year (a trend that has continued). These rates also use 1979-2000 as the climatological normal. There is no reason to expect these rates to change significantly any time soon. Additional low ice seasons will continue. The specific value for any given month during any given year is, of course, influenced by local weather conditions. But it becomes clearer every year that a new normal is being established in the Arctic. This new normal will continue to have far-reaching implications on the weather in the mid-latitudes, where most people live.

Arctic Pictures and Graphs

The following graphic is a satellite representation of Arctic ice as of September 10, 2011:

Figure 1 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Northern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20110910.

Compare this with August 7th's satellite representation, also centered on the North Pole:

Figure 2 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Northern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20110807.

Compare both of these with December 12th's satellite representation (note that the AMRS-E instrument failed during early October; replacement data is available at a lower resolution):

Figure 3 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Northern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20111212.

There is more ice at this time of year in the Bering Sea and Hudson Sea than there were last year. There is missing ice north of Scandinavia - this is the result of anomalously warm conditions in that region during the past month or so.

Overall, the health of the remaining ice pack is not healthy, as the following graphs of Arctic ice volume from the end of August and November demonstrate:

Figure 4 - PIOMAS Arctic sea ice volume time series through August 2011.

Figure 5 - PIOMAS Arctic sea ice volume time series through December 2011.

Within the past month, the magnitude of ice volume anomaly grew less severe, but remains in the 2nd standard deviation from the median. Just like the sea ice extent has a negative trend, the sea ice volume is decreasing by 2900 +/-1000 cubic kilometers per decade. The volume anomaly spent a substantial amount of time beneath the 2nd st. dev. value this year, just as it did last year. The declining trend in volume ensures that future years will witness additional low areal extents.

Switching back from volume to area, take a look at September's and December's areal extent time series data:

Figure 6 - NSIDC Arctic sea ice extent time series through early September 2011.

Figure 7 - NSIDC Arctic sea ice extent time series through early December 2011.

Antarctic Pictures and Graphs

Here is a satellite representation of Antarctic sea ice conditions from September 10th:

Figure 8 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Southern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20110910.

Compare that graphic with the same view from December 12th (again, the AMSR-E instrument failed in October and these data are what everybody is currently working with):

Figure 9 - UIUC Polar Research Group's Southern Hemispheric ice concentration from 20111212.

Ice loss is easily visible around the continent. High ice concentrations remain well into the austral spring east of the Antarctic Peninsula (the land mass that "points" to South America).

Here is the Antarctic sea ice extent time series from September:

Figure 10 - NSIDC Antarctic sea ice extent time series through early September 2011.

For comparison, here is the same data series from December:

Figure 11 - NSIDC Antarctic sea ice extent time series through early December 2011.

You can see how recent weather conditions have slowed the rate of ice melt in the past few weeks. As weather conditions are highly variable from week to week, I expect the rate of melt to increase again soon: the +/- 2 standard deviation envelope is close to the average, as shown in Figure 11. Conditions were different in the early austral spring between 2010 and 2011. They are now much more similar in value.

The biggest reason for the different trends seen in Arctic and Antarctic data? It's the so-called ozone hole. One project I did this semester was a literature review on the mechanisms and projections of ozone loss in the stratosphere. I will post most of that material on this blog after I make some adjustments. Put simply, ozone absorbs UV radiation (high energy) and re-radiates that energy as heat into the stratospheric air. As CFCs and other compounds have introduced halogens to the stratosphere and as UV radiation has released reactive forms of those halogens, ozone loss has occurred. As ozone concentrations decrease, less heat is re-radiated to the stratosphere. Colder air has therefore been present over Antarctica than otherwise would be the case. Greenhouse gases have reinforced this process. As CFC levels decrease in the future, however, stratospheric and columnar warming should occur. After a few more decades, global warming will have more influence over Antarctica and we will see how sea- and land-based ice is then affected.

Errata

Here are my State of the Poles posts from August and July.

You can find NSIDC's December report here.

2010: Largest Increase in CO2 Emissions On Record: Actions To Date Insufficient

WeatherDem — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:44:32 GMT

I wanted to share just a few brief words on an article I saw in the Denver Post (from the AP) today: Greenhouse gas levels rise. Somewhat surprisingly, a reference to the article appeared on the top of the front page of the print edition of the paper. The story, at the back on 11A, was a little too filled with various quotes from experts in the field for my taste, with no real context for readers to grasp why the news is so important.

This graph encapsulates the importance of this news item:

What this graph shows is the observations of emissions (as calculated by the IEA) represented by the black curve and 5 of the 6 emissions scenarios used by the IPCC AR4 in colored lines. The SRES begin in 2000, which was the starting year used for future simulations in the AR4. You can clearly see the effects of the partial collapse of the global economy in 2009 emissions: they went from higher than the worst-case scenario to the middle of the pack.

In 2010, however, emissions jumped back up to the top of the pack, almost as if 2009 never even happened. I would be willing to bet the 2011 numbers will demonstrate a further increase.
The simplicity of this graph should in no way distract from the deep problems underlying the data: we continue to emit more and more greenhouse gases. As a result, we are locking in more and more future warming and ensuring a cascade of resultant effects that we can't envision today. In contrast to some of my earlier posts, I want to make sure I don't convey that I think those effects will be apocalyptic because I don't think they will be.

There will be changes forced on us and on ecosystems worldwide as a result of these emissions. But what I want to start spending more time on are the solutions to the grand challenges we're facing instead of just the depths of those challenges themselves.

In short, it is clear that actions taken to date with respect to emissions clearly have been unsatisfactory. That is because the approach to developing policies that could affect emissions have been woefully inadequate. I have solidified my opinion that the IPCC is not the best approach to dealing with the adaptation or mitigation strategies. Neither do I think that the Conference on Parties, which is set to meet in a handful of weeks to discuss roles and responsibilities for developed and developing countries, is suitable for the task. I'm not sure what the best approach is, but neither of these two primary tacks have proven themselves capable of dealing with the problem to date.

Hottest Summer For One State In U.S. History X2

WeatherDem — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 04:28:34 GMT

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.
Statistically speaking, it is more significant that Texas set the record instead of Oklahoma. The number of weather stations in Texas is obviously much higher than those in Oklahoma. Most, if not all of those stations must be subjected to similar conditions for 3 months in order to set this kind of record - a truly amazing occurrence.

I'm going to riff off of Joe Romm's recent post on a similar topic and re-post some graphics I've written about before. They are particularly salient now that the summer of 2011 is fresh in our memories.

This is a plot from a NOAA-led report that shows what the future holds under a business-as-usual emissions scheme. Focusing in on Denver, which just experienced its hottest August and 3rd hottest month ever with 22 days above 90F maximum temperatures, puts this plot into some context. Denver didn't record a single 100F degree day this year. But if we continue along the path we're on much longer, we're likely to experience 7 to 9 weeks of 100F or hotter days. Moving on down to Texas and Oklahoma, things really get cooking. Between 13 and 23 weeks of 100F or hotter days are in their future. How much agriculture do you think can be successfully supported in those conditions? How much ranching can be done? How many water pipes will break in the ground as that ground swells in the heat?

And it's not just heat, as this plot from a recent NCAR study demonstrates. Palmer Drought Severity Index values in the 1930s spiked very briefly to -6 (see scale above), but rarely exceeded -3 during the rest of the decade. By the 2030 decade, projections of -4 to -6 PDSI values cover most of the American Southwest. Texas gets off "easy" with PDSI values holding near -2 for the decade. Significantly higher temperatures in twenty years' time accompanied by drought conditions worse than those of the Dust Bowl could easily be the future that comes to pass.

Given the scope of the tasks facing us: reduction of emission levels that are currently growing and deployment of infrastructure and technologies to do so, I'm not optimistic that we can turn things around in time in order to avoid these kinds of scenarios. Given the severity of the scenarios, we had better start doing something substantial soon.

Possible Record Heat In Denver Area Today

WeatherDem — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 15:01:42 GMT

I'd bet a good number of metro area folks have heard the forecast for today: HOT! The record high of 98F for the day will likely be challenged. Here is the official forecast discussion from the Denver-Boulder NWS office this morning (sorry for the all-caps, it's what the NWS text products actually look like):

SHORT TERM...A HOT AND DRY DAY IS IN STORE FOR THE FORECAST AREA TODAY WITH RECORD OR NEAR RECORD HEAT. THE UPPER LEVEL RIDGE WILL AMPLIFY A BIT OVER THE STATE WITH WARMER TEMPERATURES ALOFT. MOST SHORT RANGE MODEL GUIDANCE SHOWS 2-3C OF WARMING ACROSS NORTHEAST COLORADO FROM 24 HOURS AGO. AT THE SAME TIME...THE AIRMASS WILL BE DRYING AND THIS HAS ALREADY COMMENCED PER THE LATEST GPS INTEGRATED PRECIPITABLE WATER DATA. THIS ALL SUPPORTS RECORD OR NEAR RECORD HEAT. DENVERS RECORD IS 98F SET IN 1986...AND AT THIS POINT SEE NO REASON WE SHOULDNT AT LEAST TIE THIS RECORD GIVEN THE ABOVE MENTIONED FACTORS. THERE IS A SLIGHT RISK WE COULD REACH 100F...AND IF WE DID THAT WOULD BE THE LATEST IN THE SEASON A 100F DEGREE READING HAS BEEN OBSERVED. THE LATEST RECORDED 100F WAS ON AUGUST 16TH IN 2002.

There have been 38 90F+ days recorded at DIA so far this summer. That isn't enough to crack the top-10 summers of all time since the 10th place year had 50 90F+ days, but it is above average (33 days). Last year, DIA recorded 49 90F+ days.

As the NWS office notes, this would be the latest calendar date which recorded a 100F+ day. While we haven't experienced the ridiculous heat wave and drought that has afflicted Oklahoma (which set the record for hottest month for any state in the American history in July) or Texas, the total number of 90F+ days is significant for us considering how abnormally cool May was.

The relatively high number of 90F+ days in recent years (5 of the top 10 have occurred since 2000) and the late date at which 100F+ days occur are exactly the kind of events that have and will continue to become more prevalent as climate change effects take hold. After all, would dozens of 90F+ days be piling up with "global cooling", especially when dozens of 32F- days are not piling up? Additionally, the precipitation extremes that occurred last month around the metro area (i.e., 7"+ of rain in 9 days) will also become more common.

Eastern 3/4 Of U.S. Roasted In July 2011

WeatherDem — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 22:52:17 GMT

Thanks to global cooling (not!), the eastern 3/4 of the U.S. was much warmer than normal in July 2011. In fact, Oklahoma set a record for the warmest month of any state in American history: an average of 88.9F. Which kind of makes sense, when you think about it. After all, it was the preeminent expert on climate, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R TB-OK), whose grandchildren built an igloo on the National Mall back in February 2010 - because mocking Al Gore is the top responsibility of a sitting U.S. Senator. Maybe his family should have spent less time making fun of things they can't or don't want to understand but more time praying for rain this summer. In the end, the solution is simple: stop polluting heat-trapping gases and the atmosphere will trap less heat! Imagine that!

Back to the state of U.S. climate in July 2011.

July 2011 was the fourth warmest July in NOAA's records: 77F. It was the fourth warmest month all time. Here is what that looks like graphically:

NOAA has plenty of other noteworthy items from July at the provided link. A sampling (emphasis mine):

Regionally, the South climate region, which includes Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas, had its warmest single calendar month for any climate region since records began in 1895.

Winds ahead of monsoonal thunderstorms produced an expansive dust storm which stretched for nearly 100 miles and quickly moved through a large area of Arizona on July 5. The dust storm traveled approximately 150 miles picking up dust as it traveled across the extemely dry desert lands. The infrastructure in the densley populated city of Phoenix was directly impacted, limiting the movement of automobiles and air traffic.

The largest national footprint of D4 ("exceptional drought") in the 12-year history of the U.S. Drought Monitor occurred in July. In Texas "exceptional drought" covers more than 75 percent (201,436 sq mi) of the state. This area is larger than the entire Northeast climate region (196,224 sq mi). Drought conditions are so harsh in some locations that it would take as much as 20 inches of precipitation in one month to end the drought.

If you're lucky enough to live along the Pacific coast, July was pretty cool. For everybody else, the summer of 2011 can't end soon enough. Interestingly, there were more single-station high temperature records set in June than in July, as the following graphic from Capital Climate shows. That being said, a ratio of either 6:1 or 11:1 high-to-low records being set is dismaying.

If global cooling were truly in effect, as most climate change deniers have been aggressively arguing for the past couple of years, these kinds of records' ratios would obviously not be occurring.

Year-to-year variability exists. There is nothing certain about 2011 being warmer than 2010 or 2012 being warmer than 2011. But the chances that future years will be warmer than this year are increasing. A single snowstorm in January isn't a responsible argument for global cooling. Months' worth of record warmth across a continent is a demonstration that the climate is responding to our heat-trapping pollution in exactly the way that it should respond.

It isn't a good thing that the severely weakened cap-and-trade bill was left for dead by the Democratic-led Congress. The dust storms, record drought and record rains will ease up when residents in Arizona, Texas, and other red states realize it's in their power to end their own misery.