Guest post by Joeri Rogelj (Twitter: @joerirogelj)
Since temperature targets became international climate goals, we have been trying to understand and quantify the implications for our global emissions. Carbon budgets play an important role in this translation.
Carbon budgets tell us how much CO2 we can emit while keeping warming below specific limits. We can estimate the total carbon budget consistent with staying below a given temperature limit. If we subtract the CO2 emissions that we emitted over the past two centuries, we get an estimate of the remaining carbon budget.
I have been involved in the estimation of carbon budgets since the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report in the early 2010s. And since the first IPCC estimates published in 2013, we have learned a lot and have gotten much better at estimating remaining carbon budgets. In the 2018 IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR1.5), the latest insights were integrated in a simple framework that allowed to estimate, track, and understand updates to these carbon budgets.
The most recent Working Group 1 Report of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Cycle (WG1 AR6) provides an updated assessment of the remaining carbon budget. Here’s an insider’s view providing a deep dive into how they differ from previous reports.
The scientific basis underlying a carbon budget is our robust scientific understanding that global warming is near-linearly proportional to the total amount of CO2 we ever emit as a society. This is illustrated in Fig. SPM10 of the WG1 AR6 report, both for the past and for future projections.
The estimates of remaining carbon budgets also made it into the Summary for Policymakers – the most prominent place that can be given for any finding of the report. Table SPM.2 gives an overview of the latest estimates, for different temperature limits and different probability levels.
How have these estimates changed since previous reports?
IPCC reported carbon budgets for the first time in 2013. And since, important advances have been made in how we estimate these. Five puzzle pieces combine to give carbon budget estimates, and allow us now to understand subsequent updates.
Starting with the key message of the AR6 carbon budget update: carbon budget estimates in AR6 are very similar to those published in the SR1.5 in 2018, but they represent a significant update since AR5 in 2013.
When adjusting for the emissions since AR5 and SR1.5, AR6 remaining carbon budget for limiting warming to 1.5C with 50% chance is about 300 GtCO2 larger than in AR5, but virtually the same as in SR1.5.
For 66% probability, the AR6 budget is about 60 GtCO2 larger than in SR1.5.
The budget is so much larger than in AR5, because since 2013 more accurate methods have been published that ensure that model uncertainties over the historical period are not accumulated into the future. This is best illustrated by this technical figure from SR1.5.
Between SR1.5 and AR6 every piece of the carbon budget was reassessed:
- warming to date
- how much warming we expect to get per tonne of CO2
- how much warming would still occur once we reach net zero CO2
- how much non-CO2 warming we can expect
- Earth system feedback otherwise not covered
Let’s dive into each piece of this puzzle to understand what has changed between SR1.5 and AR6.
Warming to date – SR1.5 used a 0.97°C warming estimate between 1850-1900 and 2006-2015. This estimate already included corrections for the incomplete global coverage of observations and the different ways in which global surface temperature can be estimated. The AR6, based on a full reassessment of all available data, assesses 0.94°C of global surface temperature increase for the same period.
In isolation, this update results in central estimates being about 65 GtCO2 larger in AR6 than in SR15. For the 33% and 67% estimates that’s about 110 and 50 GtCO2 higher, respectively.
Warming per tonne of CO2 – The next piece of the puzzle is the warming we project per tonne of CO2. SR1.5 used an estimate of 0.8-2.5°C per 1000 GtC (=3664 GtCO2). AR6 assessed this quantity, also known as the Transient Climate Response to Cumulative Emissions of CO2 (or TCRE), to fall in the 1.0-2.3°C range.
Having the same central estimate, the update in TCRE causes no shift in 50% estimates, but the higher and lower percentiles are narrowed. For a 67% chance, AR6 estimates are about 50 and 100 GtCO2 larger compared to SR1.5 for 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming, respectively.
Warming after net zero CO2 – The third piece of the puzzle is the how much warming is expected to still occur once global CO2 emissions reach (and remain at) net zero. This is known as the Zero Emissions Commitment to emissions of CO2 (or ZEC).
The AR6 estimate confirms the SR1.5 estimate of no further CO2-induced warming or cooling once global CO2 emissions reach and stay at next zero. The uncertainty surrounding this value are reported separately. ZEC therefore causes no changes between SR1.5 and AR6.
Non-CO2 warming contribution – The fourth puzzle piece is the projected warming from non-CO2 emissions. As SR1.5, AR6 uses deep mitigation pathways assessed by SR1.5 (Rogelj et al, 2018; Huppmann et al, 2018), but with climate projections updated entirely with dedicated climate emulators that integrate the scientific information across chapter.
By coincidence (and it is really coincidence), the updates in radiative forcing from tens of different gases, climate sensitivity, and carbon-cycle uncertainties result in no net shift in the estimate of non-CO2 warming for the remaining carbon budget.
Pure luck, given the many updated pieces of scientific knowledge that were integrated in AR6, but convenient for explaining differences in carbon budget estimates.
Updated non-CO2 warming estimates lead to no change in remaining carbon budget estimates compares to SR1.5.
Other Earth system feedbacks – The last piece is to account for Earth system feedbacks that would otherwise not be covered. SR1.5 assumed an additional blanket reduction of 100 GtCO2 for this century for these feedbacks. This was a crude estimate and therefore not included as a central part of the remaining carbon budget numbers in SR1.5 AR6 updates this assessment entirely and includes this contribution in its main estimates.
Taking into account not only permafrost thaw, but also a host of other biogeochemical and atmospheric feedbacks, the AR6 estimates to appropriately include the effect of all these feedbacks, remaining carbon budgets have to be reduced by 26 ± 97 GtCO2 per degree Celsius of additional warming.
Altogether these updates mean AR6 remaining carbon budget estimates are very similar compared to SR1.5, while they additionally include the effect of Earth system feedbacks that would otherwise not be covered.
Selecting a remaining carbon budget requires two normative choices as a minimum: the global warming level that is to be avoided, and the likelihood or chance with which this is achieved. Further choices involve how deeply non-CO2 emissions can be reduced.
In addition to updates to science underlying carbon budget estimates, the AR6 also provides a larger set of likelihood levels for its remaining carbon budget estimates (see Table SPM.2 above). As in previous reports, AR6 provides remaining carbon budget estimates for a 33%, 50%, and 67% chance of keeping warming to a given temperature limit. In addition, however, the AR6 also provides the bracketing percentiles for the central 66% range (the range covered between 17% and 83%), so that the uncertainty of the central estimate can be adequately understood.
These values can be used in a variety of ways. For example, the central estimate for the remaining carbon budget for keeping warming to 1.5°C is now 500 GtCO2 starting from the beginning of 2020, with a 66% uncertainty range of 300–900 GtCO2.
Designing a policy for limiting warming to 1.5°C with this global 500 GtCO2 number in mind means that in 1-out-of-2 cases warming will end up below and in 1-out-of-2 cases it will end up above 1.5°C. Alternatively, it can also be understood to mean that in 1-out-of-2 cases policy measures will have to be sharpened beyond the policies consistent with a 500 GtCO2 budget over the coming decades if warming is effectively to be kept to 1.5°C. Similar examples can be given for 1.7°C or other levels (see Table 5.8 in the underlying chapter; Canadell et al (2021)).
A last item affecting the selection of remaining carbon budgets is the expectation of how deeply non-CO2 emissions can be reduced. All remaining carbon budget estimates in AR6 assume that non-CO2 emissions such as methane are reduced consistent with a deep decarbonisation pathway that reaches net zero CO2 emissions. Depending on how effectively these non-CO2 emissions can be reduced, the remaining carbon budgets can vary by 220 GtCO2 or more.
Bottom line of this technical explanation remains, however, that these budgets are small, our current annual global CO2 emissions of about 40 GtCO2/yr are reducing them rapidly, and all budgets require CO2 to decline to net zero while global emissions have not yet shown to decline.
It’s nice to have remaining carbon budgets, but now we need to get on with it and make sure that global CO2 emissions start to decline.
If you would like to know all the ins and outs of AR6 remaining carbon budgets have a look at Section 5.5 in Canadell et al (2021). The entire section describes the assessment of TCRE and remaining carbon budgets, while Box 5.2 presents a more technical comparison with carbon budget estimates from previous reports.
Joeri Rogelj is Director of Research, Grantham Institute Climate Change & Environment, Imperial College London, UK, and Senior Research Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria
Parts of this post have been published earlier as a twitter thread.
References
Huppmann, D., Rogelj, J., Kriegler, E., Krey, V., et al. (2018) A new scenario resource for integrated 1.5 °C research. Nature Climate Change. [Online] 8 (12), 1027–1030. Available from: doi:10.1038/s41558-018-0317-4.
Josep G. Canadell, J. G., P. M.S. Monteiro, M. H. Costa, L. Cotrim da Cunha, P. M. Cox, A. V. Eliseev, S. Henson, M. Ishii, S. Jaccard, C. Koven, A. Lohila, P. K. Patra, S. Piao, J. Rogelj, S. Syampungani, S. Zaehle, K. Zickfeld, 2021, Global Carbon and other Biogeochemical Cycles and Feedbacks. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M. I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J. B. R. Matthews, T. K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. In Press.
IPCC (2014) Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [MassonDelmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S. L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M. I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J. B. R. Matthews, T. K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press. In Press
Rogelj, J., Shindell, D., Jiang, K., Fifita, S., et al. (2018) Mitigation pathways compatible with 1.5°C in the context of sustainable development. In: Greg Flato, Jan Fuglestvedt, Rachid Mrabet, & Roberto Schaeffer (eds.). Global Warming of 1.5 °C: an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty. [Online]. Geneva, Switzerland, IPCC/WMO. pp. 93–174. Available from: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/.
The information how carbon budgets are determined and adjusted is of course interesting and useful (for some.) In the same way, the details of how modern F1 engines and drive trains work is interesting and useful. But the far larger majority of fans only care about the potential excitement of crashes, and who wins the race and the Championship.
For me personally, carbon budgets are not a mystery. The more important question is: is it necessary for the general public to know this at such detail? Though I’m sure RC regulars will appreciate it.
So I am curious who was Rogelj’s target audience? Was it his peers, journalists, academics, politicians, or the general public. And what was the original purpose, what ends did Rogelj hope to achieve? I don’t know the answers from reading the article.
From Twitter:
I find a deep disconnect between narrative in report and the carbon budgets you provide.
Basically you legitimate emitting other 500GtCO2 and claim consistency with 1.5C at 50%. So basically nothing will change in real policy and energy planning. And this was your last chance…
7:38 AM · Aug 10, 2021
@JoeriRogelj Replies:
The IPCC’s task is to provide the most comprehensive, open, and transparent assessment of our understanding of the risks of human-made climate change.*** Reports reflect this.
There being a last chance or not doesn’t change how reports are written, but hopefully how they are used.
https://twitter.com/XaviGCasals/status/1424847676026277888
I disagree. I believe it should change how Reports are written and what is being said in them. It should also change how Articles and Tweets about the Reports are written too. Denying this doubles down on the deep disconnect that exists between the standard scientific rhetoric and the reality of the situation.
*** For the record: “the objective of the IPCC is to provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies. IPCC reports are also a key input into international climate change negotiations.”
REF: https://www.ipcc.ch/about/
The critical importance and urgency of the current international climate change negotiations at COP26 and the urgent need for politicians to develop sane rational appropriate sustainable and effective climate policies is unprecedented in human history.
The AR6 and COP26 really is your last best chance… you’re extremely unlikely to ever get better one.
My central advice is: Accept Reality. People are not persuaded by logic or evidence. You are wasting your time until you (and everyone writing climate science papers, IPCC reports, and articles about both) accept that and respond accordingly.
So, may I suggest a more understandable and accurate headline about the data presented:
The IPCC’s updated carbon budget numbers: We are Screwed! Time has run out this time.
When you read a really well written essay, short story, novel or user manual you just know it immediately. You don’t need to think about it. You just get it. You understand what is important and what works.
Agreed. But I will put it much more bluntly than that:
*There is no “remaining carbon budget”. There never was, even before the IPCC was founded 1988. We just have to cut the use of fossil fuels as fast as possible.*
The method of “temperature goals” (sic!) is nonsense. QED by the political “results”. *The whole Paris “agreement” is, as the father of the IPCC, James Hansen, said when it was launched in november 2015: “pure bullshit”*. It is that simple.
Because: what is a voluntary agreement? It is a contradiction in terms, it is just another contribution to the language of the totalitarian state in Orwell’s “1984”: doublespeak, the intention of which is to make us all be fooled once again and fool ourselves to believe we didn’t get fooled this time.
We would have to stop using fossil fuels (and reduce our use of other resources as fast as possible) even if there was no climate problem at all. Why? Because fossil fuel is a finite, non-renewable resource, and we have already used up more than half the oil available, and that was the half that was easiest and cheapest to get to. To empty the reserves of the second half will take only a small fraction of the time it took to consume the first half.
Here is the explanation: https://youtu.be/O133ppiVnWY?t=1335 . This is from 2001, but that only means the problems are much worse now, two decades and endless amounts of burned oil later.
Why don’t people at the top get this? It’s really simple. They don’t want to. The ideological slogan of our time is everywhere: “optimism”. Never has so few been so “optimistic” on behalf of so many and whith so little factual reason to be so. Never since the “peace” agreement in Munich 1938…
“When you realize that, this will come as no surprise: “High-resolution computer models suggest that slow-moving storms could become 14 times more common over land by the end of the century in a worst-case scenario.”
But, as the article says: “The intensity and scale of the recent floods in western Europe, in which more than 180 people died, *have shocked climate scientists, who *did not expect* records to be so comprehensively broken over such a wide area or so soon*.”
“The intensity and scale of the floods in Germany this week have shocked climate scientists, who did not expect records to be broken this much, over such a wide area or this soon.
After the deadly heatwave in the US and Canada, where temperatures rose above 49.6C two weeks ago, the deluge in central Europe has raised fears that human-caused climate disruption is making extreme weather even worse than predicted.(…)
Climate scientists have long predicted that human emissions would cause more floods, heatwaves, droughts, storms and other forms of extreme weather, *but the latest spikes have surpassed many expectations.*
“*I am surprised by how far it is above the previous record*,” Dieter Gerten, professor of global change climatology and hydrology at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said. “We seem to be not just above normal but in domains we didn’t expect in terms of spatial extent and the speed it developed.”
Gerten, who grew up in a village in the affected area, said it occasionally flooded, but not like this week. Previous summer downpours have been as heavy, but have hit a smaller area, and previous winter storms have not raised rivers to such dangerous levels. “This week’s event is totally untypical for that region. It lasted a long time and affected a wide area,” he said.
Scientists will need more time to assess the extent to which human emissions made this storm more likely, but the record downpour is in keeping with broader global trends.
“With climate change we do expect all hydro-meteorological extremes to become more extreme. What we have seen in Germany is broadly consistent with this trend.” said Carlo Buontempo, the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts.
The seven hottest years in recorded history have occurred since 2014, largely as a result of global heating, which is caused by engine exhaust fumes, forest burning and other human activities. Computer models predict this will cause more extreme weather, which means records will be broken with more frequency in more places.
The Americas have been the focus in recent weeks. The Canadian national daily heat record was exceeded by more than 5C two weeks ago, as were several local records in Oregon and Washington. Scientists said these extremes at such latitudes were virtually impossible without human-driven warming. Last weekend, the monitoring station at Death Valley in California registered 54.4C, which could prove to be the highest reliably recorded temperature on Earth.
Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California in Los Angeles, said *so many records were being set in the US this summer that they no longer made the news: “The extremes that would have been newsworthy a couple of years ago aren’t, because they pale in comparison to the astonishing rises a few weeks ago.*” This was happening in other countries too, he said, though with less media attention. “The US is often in the spotlight, but we have also seen extraordinary heat events in northern Europe and Siberia. This is not a localised freak event, it is definitely part of a coherent global pattern.”
Lapland and parts of Siberia also sweltered in record-breaking June heat, and cities in India, Pakistan and Libya have endured unusually high temperatures in recent weeks. Suburbs of Tokyo have been drenched in the heaviest rainfall since measurements began and a usual month’s worth of July rain fell on London in a day. Events that were once in 100 years are becoming commonplace. Freak weather is increasingly normal.
Some experts fear the recent jolts indicate the climate system may have crossed a dangerous threshold. Instead of smoothly rising temperatures and steadily increasing extremes, *they are examining whether the trend may be increasingly “nonlinear” or bumpy as a result of knock-on effects from drought or ice melt in the Arctic*. This theory is contentious, but recent events have prompted more discussion about this possibility and the reliability of models based on past observations.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/16/climate-scientists-shocked-by-scale-of-floods-in-germany
Why were they shocked? Why has the IPCC been shocked time and again? It’s simple: almost noone wants to understand what is unpleasant.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/21/catastrophic-floods-could-hit-europe-far-more-often-study-finds
Hi @karsten, thanks for the comments and quotations. It does tell a story, doesn’t it?
About: It’s simple: almost noone wants to understand what is unpleasant.
Yes it plays out everywhere, including here still and for a very long time. But that doesn’t matter now.
About The method of “temperature goals” (sic!) is nonsense. QED by the political “results”. *The whole Paris “agreement” is, as the father of the IPCC, James Hansen, said when it was launched in november 2015: “pure bullshit”*. It is that simple.
Yes, I agree. I had included a comment about temperature goals, but edited it out to shorten and narrow the focus of my comment above.
Here is what I wanted to say:
For example @JoeriRogelj says: “Carbon budgets play an important role in this translation.”
Unfortunately yes. My view is that Annual and Cummulative Carbon Budgets (Global and National) alongside Global Atmospheric GHG PPM numbers should have been the UNFCCC Yardsticks all along. Not the unstable variable (GSAT) Temperature estimations. If that was the case no “translation” would ever have been necessary. Life would already be simpler and clearer.
[ New comment: so yes, i agree, using temperature goals like +1.5C and anomalies as yardsticks is BS. It belongs in the backroom. This has been Intentionally done for effect and to take advantage of the uncertainty and rubbery nature of temperatures in the Public’s mind. 0.1C and 1C degrees is nothing!!!
How much has it warmed so far up to the AR6? No one will (or can) give a straight consistent answer. 0.98C? 1.0C? 1.1C? 1.2C, or is it somewhere between 0.8C to 1.3C? Game set and match. “They” win again.
The IPCC’s design, the UNFCCC system and the scientists who engage in it have been thoroughly manipulated by some very smart knowledgeable people.
This is again showing up in how the discussions and debates about what action to take now (suddenly the denial is dropped and big players are all on board with direct action to be sustainable) – the Paris Goals have been overtaken by the notion that TECHNOLOGY and ENGINEERING can solve the problem through massive as yet imaginary theoretical and ineffectual NET/CDR sequestration of CO2 – which directly underpin the Paris Goals – the world has been conned. It has happened right before our eyes while the majority of climate scientists and activists have remained silent. The IPCC even embraced the idea and ran with it. Naive fools, one and all.
But gee, it sounded like a great idea at the time. It sounded plausible, we had to investigate the ideas. The classic example of the Mad Scientist on drugs doing his “evil work” in a James Bond movie.
The world was warned about this planning by the mega wealthy mega powerful denial group of international “neoliberal” ideologues long ago. Yet here is it, plain as day. Embedded in the COP system and the IPCC reporting guidelines.
Keep kicking that can down the road, was the plan – it has worked and it is still working out today – COP26 is more of the same – any real science or warnings within the IPCCs AR6 is going to be ignored all over again. ]
and a short PS edited out before:
Think about this kind of rhetoric @JoeriRogelj: “It’s nice to have remaining carbon budgets, but now we need to get on with it and make sure that global CO2 emissions start to decline.” – is a weak and meaningless motherhood statement. They should be avoided at all costs.
iow it is a Nothing Burger disconnected from reality.
It’s better to say nothing at all than something like that.
The Arctic tundra is thawing out. Methane and other carbon sources are being liberated by the warming climate. There were forest fires in Norway last summer about 320 km north of the “Arctic” Circle (at 66.67 degrees north) and the capital of Alaska reported ambient temperature above 100 degrees North. With the amounts of methane being release we have passed the potential solutions to maintain our tolerable ambient temperatures all over the world. The antarctic is releasing massive amounts of Ice packs and glaciers and what was permafrost and that will also raise the sea and ocean levels. Our human population is now about 7.782 billion people and the growth is not slowing down very much. We keep shrinking places to live on and diminishing the territories of other Species. Hence we have started the next massive extinction. The very conservative percentage of people living within 100 km (61 miles) of seas and oceans and will create .climate refugees. A Secretary of the Navy said it was 70& a few years ago. He was probably including estuarial areas, and there is a lot of them. Countries on Islands in the Pacific are disappearing.. We have been cautioned for quite a long time and we just ignored most people unless they are at risk (Miami).. Rich people are taking over higher elevations..
Given a) the historical track record of how politicians react – not verbally but *in practice* – to the IPCC reports – they *only* react verbally if at all, and then *only* with promises that are *always broken*, b) the historical experience since the beginning of history of the *very low* (if any at all) ability of the so-called “leaders” of mankind to learn *anything* from past catastrophes (fx they all, with *no exceptions*, in 1939 were not even prepared for a repetition of the 1914-18 total war madness, *a significant or rather *the dominant proportion of them* were longing and very eagerly preparing for something even far worse* – and they were succesfull indeed achieving that goal…), and finally c) the experience so far with *the consequences* of a global mean temperature rise from around 1990 to this day of a little below one degree C, which are *only just beginning to emerge and mostly not at all foreseen by the IPCC* – cfr. the relentless rise in extreme heatwaves and wildfires, flooding etc. just the last fifteen years, the rapidly thinning and melting polar sea ice – *the area since 2012 already lingering downwards past the low level calculated by IPCC 2007 not to occur before the 2050ies* and the rapidly warming arctic permafrost, reported by the leading scientific expertice *2019 in northern Canada to be already at warming rates calculated by IPCC 2013 not to occur before the 2090ies*, given all this: *how on earth* can any reasonable human being believe that 1) *we are aleady far into a very bad and fast deteriorating global climatic and ecological destabilization* and that 2) *any* talk from the IPCC about any “remaining emission budgets” will lead to *anything* but more – at best greenwashing – *complacency* and ***no action at all***, meaning *business as extremely usual and more wars and societal deroute for years and years to come?
If anyone here is still “optimistic”, this statement from yesterday ought to sober him/her up very fast indeed:
“(…) on Wednesday, in a statement issued from the White House by the national security adviser Jake Sullivan, these tensions exploded into the open.
Sullivan’s statement reads as follows:
“Higher gasoline costs, if left unchecked, risk harming the ongoing global recovery. The price of crude oil has been higher than it was at the end of 2019, before the onset of the pandemic. While Opec+ recently agreed to production increases, these increases will not fully offset previous production cuts that Opec+ imposed during the pandemic until well into 2022. At a critical moment in the global recovery (?!? What recovery from what? KVJ), this is simply not enough. *President Biden has made clear that he wants Americans to have access to affordable and reliable (sic! KVJ) energy, ***including at the pump***. Although we are not a party to Opec (you don’t say? KVJ), the United States will always speak (sic! KVJ) to international partners regarding issues of significance that affect our national economic and security affairs, in public and private.”
Yes, you read that correctly. One of the most senior figures in the Biden administration, *the administration that promised climate was “everywhere” in its policy, is declaring that an increase in petrol prices to $3.17 per gallon is a matter of national security and that the US reserves the right to cajole Opec and Russia into flooding the world with more oil*.” (My exclamation marks KVJ).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/12/pushing-oil-production-us-joe-biden-killing-climate-pledges
And: why am I not surprized at all by this? Why the roaring silence from climate scientists about this frank testimonium number n+1 of no brains at all from the very top of “the greatest nation in the country” (Bush the 2th)?
Why are the IPCC shocked by the endless parade of extreme weather events this summer, last summer, 2019. 2018 etc.? Because their science was so good? Their ability to “make the leaders listen” was so enormous?
I beg you to excuse my rethorical questions and my sarcasm, but we are surely living in bizarro world. Long past any time to at last realize that “optimism” has indeed been the straight road to hell. Hope is something very different from “optimism”. Hope must build on the ability to confront reality, to be sincere about it, while “optimism” is just the usual suspects talking and talking, telling lies to escape from it. What is by now obvious is that the IPCC (as the UN) began as a brave attempt 1988, but has since then ended up as an empty ritualistic theatre, doing their job of covering the unpleasant scientific facts with layers of complacency to the oiligarchs, more and more reminding you of the last scenes of the tragedy “Faust” by Goethe. What the oiligarchs “hear” is only this: we have a carbon budget, there is room for more gambling, sweet dreams are made of oil, we are on the road to Mars now, more emissions, there is room more and more and more of the same, the clock is ticking, but it is always only five minutes to midnight. The IPCC has “done the job”. Again. It has fetched the stick again. Public go to sleep. Again. Good dog.
Sorry, I forgot a “not” in my text above, here: “(…) *how on earth* can any reasonable human being believe that 1) *we are *not* al*r*eady far into a very bad and fast deteriorating global climatic and ecological destabilization* (…)”.
Links about 1) the arctic sea ice decline being underestimated by IPCC 2007: https://skepticalscience.com/images/Arctic_models_obs.gif , fig 3 in this: https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=51
Underestimation of the reduction rate of the sea ice thickness: https://tc.copernicus.org/articles/15/2429/2021/
2) Faster warming of canadian permafrost: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2019GL082187#
3) New world record in doublespeak: “Alok Sharma, the UK minister in charge of the Cop26 talks to be held in Glasgow this November, told the Observer that the consequences of failure would be “catastrophic”: “I don’t think there’s any other word for it. You’re seeing on a daily basis what is happening across the world. Last year was the hottest on record, the last decade the hottest decade on record.”
But Sharma also insisted the UK could carry on with fossil-fuel projects, in the face of mounting criticism of plans to license new oil and gas fields.(…)” etc.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/07/were-on-the-brink-of-catastrophe-warns-tory-climate-chief
A very sincere warning indeed…Surely they are all “listening” very intensely indeed to the carbon “budget” calculations from the IPCC (or was it the OPEC? What’s your name again, darling?), *especially all the fine details*. Of course they are very carefully considering one metre sea leve or two in 2100 or seven to fifteen in 2300. Long before they dream about their next billion dollars, the toast tomorrow night, the FTSE index this afternoon…
I mean they read this very carefully: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co-emissions-by-region
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/20/carbon-emissions-to-soar-in-2021-by-second-highest-rate-in-history
https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/
At least as carefully as they read this when it was breaking news (in neverland):
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/ (2019)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/03/heatwaves-longer-since-1950s-study-frequency
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/dec/08/heatwaves-likely-every-other-year-by-2030s-says-met-office-study – (2014 from the British Meteorological Office)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/04/atmospheric-co2-levels-rise-sharply-despite-covid-19-lockdowns – the enormous, colossal emission reductions from the lockdowns will be renembered for ages to come by our grandchildren with endless respect and gratitude. Because never in the history of mankind has so little been so blown up to make so much fuzz by so few media outlets, paid for and achieved with so much effort by so many and again disappeared so fast. Almost as fast as the latest IPCC report disappeared from the front pages and the breaking news to end the unpleasant interruption of the utterly important and very moving stories about Britney Spears, Lionel Messi and all the other great human beings of our time which we all know all too little about.
Karsten,
Thank you! You’ve made my own contemplated responses largely unnecessary. But I’ll repeat this one, that I have taught to my students as part of my college “Planetary Climate Science” course for many years….. My top recommendation is that the good scientists of the IPCC DIVORCE themselves from the IPCC and the UN entirely. They were duped into thinking that by joining the IPCC they would be influencing policy makers. A noble goal, certainly. But after 30 years of the IPCC, clearly that has not happened one iota. Instead the goal seems to be the muzzling of the science by the political people who have veto power over all that is said in official IPCC documents. And 1000x worse – to put the imprimatur of science onto the neutered, redacted, sugar-coated, can-kicked-down-the-road publication that emerges. It’s the worst possible outcome! Because the public largely knows how to “consider the source”, and discount the politicians and Big Oil when they speak directly to the public. But instead, far more effectively, they act as puppet masters behind the IPCC – they get the scientists to ignore or bland down their own published journal research by neglecting so much that has appeared since the AR5 release – the clear impact of amplifying low cloud loss feedbacks, aerosol cooling underestimated, much higher ECS, stronger NOx and CO2 shortwave heating effects, the work of MacDougall et al, on how ECS=5C sends climate beyond control even with zero direct human CO2 emissions, Walter-Anthony on permafrost lakes methane emissions, and countless other works… and then come out with yet another document that assumes the hard work will be done by our kids, after the current political powers are DEAD… I’m appalled. These political types are experts, however. Experts at manipulation. I do give them that. It makes them extremely dangerous, and they should be entirely removed from the clear communication of the science. The journal science is NOT getting out to the public, and certainly not well done in the IPCC official publications. It’s being portrayed as “dire” by some media, but it’s not nearly as dire as the published journal research it should be fairly portraying.
@karsten I beg you to excuse my rhetorical questions and my sarcasm, but we are surely living in bizarro world.
It’s all good. In another comment today I was going to say the whole world seemed like some Mad Hatter’s Tea Party to me..
I did see a note made in the AR6 WG1 TS that an sea ice free arctic is still not expected until the 2080s. If that isn’t bizarro, not sure what would be.
Why are the IPCC shocked by the endless parade of extreme weather events this summer, last summer, 2019. 2018 etc.?
Beats me. Unanswerable questions, beyond the ken of reason and logic. But shocked they are.
Hope must build on the ability to confront reality, to be sincere about it, while “optimism” is just the usual suspects talking and talking, telling lies to escape from it.
I agree. Optimism and pessimism and doomism are words thrown around like confetti these days. For example Michael Mann has said repeatedly lately through the media and twitter that he is still “optimistic”. I cannot know where he is coming from, but either way this kind of behaviour and rhetoric is unhelpful and will not end well.
People need to face reality – and recognize that COP26, the Paris Goals, NETs, and so on are great big lies. While the IPCC prevaricates on the +1.5C threshold expected to be crossed in the next decade +/- no matter what gets decided at COP26.
They cannot even say that global GHG emissions have never been higher and are expected to keep increasing this decade.
“This report is a reality check,” said IPCC Working Group I Co-Chair Valérie Masson-Delmotte. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2021/08/IPCC_WGI-AR6-Press-Release_en.pdf
It’s seems better. More nuanced. More confident. More focused. I’m far from convinced it’s a reality check. I doubt it is going to make any positive difference whatsoever or drive any substantive changes to BAU or people’s minds.
@karsten about the White House pushing oil production increases to lower prices.
Why the roaring silence from climate scientists …?
I saw one speaking up, see Peter Kalmus @ClimateHuman
“So far, Biden is indeed proving to be a climate disaster”
https://twitter.com/ClimateHuman/status/1425596897666867203
This is what I consider genuine optimistic message; by Kalmus:
I am calling for a rapid end to the fossil fuel industry. This is the 1st key piece for most people getting out of this alive. The 2nd key piece is reorganizing economics: degrowth. There IS a path, those in power aren’t walking on it… yet.
Everyone, keep pushing on the fossil fuel industry until it topples, it’s starting to crack and sway. Push harder than you’ve ever pushed, each in your own way. Now is the time.
(terribly radical, but a big improvement on:- now we need to make sure that global CO2 emissions start to decline. – or we need to cut our GHG emissions by 45% by 2030.)
Some level of deliberate degrowth would be helpful, but too much too fast would collapse the economy, and destroy peoples lives, and such a plan is incredibly unlikely to be adopted anyway given most people are fairly materialistic. The great economic depression of the 1930’s was characterised by substantial degrowth.
So our only real hope is renewables (and maybe some nuclear power), and multiple carbon sequestration strategies, even although the way forward is hard work. This is why I tend to promote these things.
In all the print expended on “carbon budgets” over the years… I have yet to see the idea actually precisely defined. Does this carbon budget include only the direct human CO2 emissions? If so, I find it not very useful. Does it assume the indirect human-caused emissions are negligible? Does it assume they are not going to increase further? What of the indirect emissions caused by permafrost thaw feedbacks? What about the strong reversal in CO2 sequestration now shown to be net emissions, from tropical forests? What of the rising wildfires taking ‘sequestered’ carbon into the atmosphere? All are indirect emissions that are human caused and will affect climate dramatically. The work of MacDougall et al 2013 and 2016 especially worry me, as they found that on a BAU till 2050 scenario, that even for ECS = only 3C, that temperatures will continue to rise as atmospheric CO2 will not fall, and if ECS=5C as the climate models and Friedrich et al 2016 found, that atmospheric CO2 continues to rise strongly even after all human direct emissions are set to zero after 2050.
Hi @Richard, I totally understand your confusion and frustrations. The material above is quite unclear as is the info in the IPCC reports and where to find it easily.
The article does kind of touch on the issue you raise, but only lightly and confusingly. He’s using standardized jargon all the way through.
First look at the non-CO2 warming estimates section, down to :
“Updated non-CO2 warming estimates lead to no change in remaining carbon budget estimates compares to SR1.5.”
But Joeri Rogelj isn’t interested in writing anything more explanatory than were there any variations between the AR6 vs the SR15 report when it comes to carbon budgets. This article is not really what you’d think of a summary to explain the facts of the matter clearly.
and then look at Other Earth system feedbacks section.
Altogether these updates mean AR6 remaining carbon budget estimates are very similar compared to SR1.5, while they additionally include the effect of Earth system feedbacks that would otherwise not be covered.
Of course that is as clear as mud too. It’s not your fault though. You are clearly smart enough to ask those really good questions – all you need is a decent clear explanation in plain coherent english. This isn’t it.
These kinds of articles are not going to help. Because it is the same kind of boring rhetoric and language which led us here in the first place.
I have read up on this issue in the AR6 WG1 TS … but that’s not easy to work out either. I could make a fair go answering your specific questions above (get back if you want me to try), but I think it would be much better if Joeri Rogelj himself did it. He’s the expert!!!
What I can say with confidence is this::
The Science in the AR6 WG1 tells us unambiguously that we cannot avoid short term dangerous catastrophic and uncontrollable climate change because our Global Carbon Budget will be blown within the decade! Give or take a few years.
“In fact, it is virtually impossible for science to determine, with any degree of certainty or probability what our Carbon Budget remaining might exactly be. We cannot even hazard a reasonable guess how large additional future non-CO2 emissions might eat into the available Budget.
The climate is already responding in ways not predicted by prior models as the temperature rises. We just do not know enough at this point to be certain about any specific detail the next one to three decades. But we do know with certainty overall we must act now, and fast, or else.”
“Rapidly increasing regional temperatures will continue to drive non-CO2 emissions as well as environmental CO2 emissions higher in unpredictable ways. Therefore we must adhere to the Precautionary Principle and assume we may not even have a decade before GSATs break the 1.5C barrier and our Carbon Budgets are completely consumed forever.”
Because that is the truth of it. That is what all those “scientific numbers” are actually telling us – it matters enormously how Reports and Articles are written – in fact it is far more important than the actual included Facts and the Data! The devil is in the details, yes, but it is better to leave all that jargon buried deep in the AR6 WG1 where only the really brave or competent dare venture.
When it comes to alerting people about the risks of climate change today a list of percentages and confidence levels is nothing but Noise.
This 500 GtCO2 budget number is a fiction. A fantasy. It’s made up. An estimate. It is not true. It’s not provable beyond all doubt. Besides, it is irrelevant at the end of the day! What’s needed is the spoken truth – in simple, direct, human terms – in a way anyone can understand.
And so it’s more effective to instead say:
Our current annual global CO2 emissions of 40 GtCO2/yr are still the highest they have ever been and currently increasing higher. Current COP26 National commitment out to 2030 show any reduction in human forced CO2 and GHG emissions will be marginal at best. Whereas to have ANY CHANCE of hitting Net Zero Emissions by 2050 the man-made emissions must be drastically, radically and rapidly cut by at least half globally by 2030. Doing that is the only way to stop catastrophic global warming and easing the more extreme weather events that come with it.
But these very deep cuts to global emissions is not what is happening nor planned to happen in the next decade by the Governments meeting at COP26. Therefore the real truth is that whatever the remaining Carbon Budgets might theoretically be, the total Carbon Budget has already been committed to – it has already been spent. It has already been plugged into Economic Pipeline. It’s gone!
PLUS, it is already known and provable cutting global emissions by 45% between now and 2030 is bio-physically, economically and politically impossible anyway – without an immediate widespread extreme radical change to the entrenched global system and our lifestyle expectations.
The Reality is – the world is no where near that happening let alone immediately.
These things are not going to change overnight, therefore the reality is:
We the People are the Titanic. Our current course cannot be corrected fast enough. We are about to strike the Iceberg. A global wide human disaster is about to unfold before our very eyes. It has already begun. It cannot be stopped. There are not enough Lifeboats on board to save everyone and maintain their first world lifestyles as well. Not going to happen.
Faced with this overwhelming catastrophe in the making, any analysis or technical explanations about Carbon Budgets are essentially moot and a waste of everyone’s time to be thinking about them. Instead, something massive needs to change first and it needs to start changing quickly.
So what’s needed before COP26 to have any effect is a Revolution in Thinking: in language, in attitudes and in what is possible. Facing reality head on would also help. Only then can the world collectively make rational evidence based and ethically sound decisions of what do about it.
Unfortunately the world has never been more polarized than how it is today. There is no shared reality. It does not exist.
The IPCC and climate science are never going to change that.
I have the same questions about AR6. I worry that the model projections could be overly optimistic by considering land use to continue to be a CO2 sink, whereas increased temperatures are turning land into an emissions source through fire, drought and pest mortality, as well as permafrost thaw. Continued deforestation is also a major contributor. Intensifying El Ninos could also increase CO2 emissions from land.
Further, there is a danger of tipping points such as large-scale Amazon and boreal forest dieback, rapid permafrost thaw, and methane release from clathrates. These processes are already under way, and documented in the WG1 full report as potential factors. Fire and methane release are included in some (but not all) of the Dynamic Global Vegetation Models. However, they are not mentioned in the Summary for Policymakers. Instead, B.4.3 states “Additional ecosystem responses to warming not yet fully included in climate models, such as CO2 and CH4 fluxes from wetlands, permafrost thaw and wildfires, would further increase concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere.”
The atmosphere currently contains 415 ppm CO2 (and without CO2 removal, would reach ~550 ppm CO2 by 2100 if following the intermediate scenario of RCP 4.5). Tropical forest dieback could add up to 200 PgC, boreal forest dieback 27 PgC, and permafrost up to 240 PgC of CO2 and 5 PgC of CH4 this century (Full Report, Table 5.6). In total, these feedbacks could bump a RCP 4.5 scenario up to RCP 6.0 (2.4-3.7C warming from 1850-1900).
The responses you received below do not really answer the questions of whether: (a) these processes actually were included in the models but were downplayed in the text (esp. the SPM), or (b) if they were *not* included in the models, and if not, why.
On the 15 Aug I said above, “I think it would be much better if Joeri Rogelj himself (answered the questions) He’s the expert!!!”
I still think that is the case however asking reasonable questions here to clarify what is and isn’t included in Carbon Budgets and Climate Models appears counter-productive and a wasted effort.
If it is important, try here https://twitter.com/JoeriRogelj or here https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/j.rogelj Good luck.
Climate science, IPCC and the global population need urgently
“an educational *reset* of climate science and climate protection strategies.”
Several times I have asked here in RC the question:
What is the strongest, fastest and most natural climate protection for our planet?
And because I don’t feel like waiting another 30 years for an answer, I answered the question right away: — It’s the clouds !!!
They keep ~ 20% of the incoming solar energy away from the earth system.
This fact is part of the basic ABC of every climate scientist.
It seems they went out on vacation or locked themself up in their institute? With rockets and satellites they want to offer us the XYZ of the climate science and end of human history even more precisely.
Doesn’t a climate science have to deal with climate protection strategies in a case of emergency?
That would actually be like if in a corona crisis all the experts, virologists, pharmaceutical companies and doctors limit themselves to telling you 200 times a day: Keep your distance! 1.5m !!! and not spend a second or effort worrying about a vaccine or any other medicin.
Lowering greenhouse gas concentrations in order to prevent the earth temperatures from reaching further extreme values is, in my opinion only one of many options to deal with cooling the planet.
But with actually growing CO² emissions -Not- really a viable option and has a similar effect like to throw a little less fuel into the flames in order to extinguish the fire. Any fire fighter working with this strategy should go to madhouse or prison.
Alternative climate protection strategies are needed that actually have a negative (cooling) radiative forcing on the global radiation balance.
Perhaps you are interested in such a simple strategy – just start to think about it.
The best strategy to keep distance of 1,5°C warming is water as a vaccine:
– To retain the volume of SLR(3,7mm=1335km³) of the yearly, global river discharge and bring it to evaporation —> to increase cloud amount —> to increase earth albedo —> is simple to understand and the following improvements or added values are associated with it:
– stabilized sea level
– less flood damage
– less drought damage or a reduction in the lowest water levels
– thick potatoes and secured harvest
– lower water prices
– an additional cooling and transport capacity of
680KWh/m³ for the ground and the surrounding air, especially in summer with hot & dry wind
currents
– more clouds in summer and thus higher albedo over the global land areas with a cooling effect on
the global temperature of the earth`s atmosphere.
– Maintaining or improving the CO² assimilation of land plants (1-2Kg C- binding / m³ transpired H²O)
1-2Gt in total/year.
– less wind erosion, species loss … and much more.
And don`t stop your efforts to think about producing less CO² !
@macias shurly
I don’t know anything about this myself, bar real basic stuff, but Dr. James Hansen seems to be on your side of the debate, questions here. This is something newish from him I hadn’t heard about because I stopped looking at anything to do with CC for several years (it was all too depressing).
From June 2021 See page 20 onward: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/20210614_ForewordHansen.pdf
Oops! We are geoengineering the dickens out of the planet right now! Because of increased greenhouse gases Earth is out of energy balance, more energy coming in than going out.
One widely discussed way to reduce geoengineering is solar radiation management (NAS, 2021). It involves temporary reflection of a small share of solar energy hitting Earth so as to restore Earth’s energy balance while the work to eliminate fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess atmospheric greenhouse gases is ongoing.
In October 2018 at the first joint meeting of the American Geophysical Union and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Xi’an, China, I presented climate simulations in which aerosols were added to the atmosphere with alternative geographical distributions (Hansen, 2018 http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2018/China_Charts_Handout_withNotes.pdf ).
With aerosols over the Southern Ocean the effect is the opposite of what has been happening in the real world with increasing CO2. Instead, Antarctic Bottom Water formation around the coast of Antarctica is invigorated, the Southern Oceans cools at the depths of the ice shelves, the ocean surface layer warms, and Earth as a whole begins to cool off.
Research to better understand the climate system and find ways to reduce geoengineering of Earth is warranted, in my opinion. We are likely to reach a point when – despite global efforts to phase out fossil fuel emissions – it is clear that we are headed toward large sea level rise and loss of our coastal cities.
Humanity may then wish to consider options such as spraying tiny droplets and cloud condensation nuclei into the air from autonomous floats on the Southern Ocean, with the material being sprayed extracted from the ocean itself. Such aerosols as a tool for conservation are about as natural an approach as one can imagine. They may be capable of restoring Earth’s energy balance while we work on reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases.
Yet the popular first reaction to such proposed research is to condemn it, perhaps because it seems unnatural. However, in our efforts to support nature we can’t afford to condemn such research any more than we can simply dismiss the potential and need for advanced nuclear power.
In light of the global climate and environmental crises, we instead need to soberly evaluate and weigh the likelihood and range of risks, as we reconstruct a viable future.
(end quotes)
Hansen has been right about quite a few things in his life, so maybe he should be at least listened to. The ref covers a lot of his history dealing with the climate science issues and politics etc. I think it is a good read.
@reality check
Shurely I agree with lots of statements from Dr. J. Hansen e.g.:
The best measure of our geoengineering is Earth’s energy imbalance.
You say: “I don’t know anything about this myself, bar real basic stuff,…
I asked for: “an educational *reset* of climate science and climate protection strategies.”
— because I fear that climate science and all the experts and bogus experts who speak publicly on the subject of climate have forgotten some very fundamental climate wisdom. Missing, fundamental considerations such as:
– An intelligent being reacts to undesired warming – with cooling.
– CO² causes a moderate, warming radiative forcing / H²O a strong cooling one.
– who is not intelligent enough to keep CO² out of the atmosphere / should at least be smart enough to bring more H²O into the atmosphere.
– For millions of years clouds and water have been the strongest most natural protection against unwanted heat, solar energy and fire in general.
– White sun hats are more effective than black ones.
– Albedo is the Meta-factor ! So the physical albedo of the earth will decide our fate and the continuation of creation.
All of these platitudes are part of my alternative climate strategy. So it is neither difficult to understand nor utopian. It has long been practiced wherever rain or river water is retained to prevent it from flowing into the oceans. and is therefore only a question of the size of the house number and volume.
As an artist and meta-physicist, I like to assign the albedo also a spiritual version.
Albedo(whiteness) and reflection are ambiguous in my mother tongue – and without reflection (thinking) there is no whiteness (wisdom).
I realize that I feel like the only one in this solar system, who thinks a relative easy, fast and low cost lowering of the sea level & cooling the planet is still possible, — otherwise I would not pursue my alternative, holistic climate protection strategy with such force.
You say: “I stopped looking at anything to do with CC for several years (it was all too depressing)”
Maybe your reality check reset of your climate science basics helps you and others out of your depressions.
That would also be of great help to me – to help you.
Hi @marcias
If I understand your core idea/theory correctly, it is to retain more precipitation (water) upon the land. Stopping it from flowing to the oceans.
I have seen the incas (?) rock walks on hillsides setup to slow the movement of water to the bottom allowing more to be absorbed by the land in order to produce crops. I think you mentioned things like this, plus each person’s home for rain to be spread up the ground instead of running the storm water rains to the sea. And larger possibilities upon the landscapes.
I think you are saying that holding back water flow to the oceans (any way possible) allowing it to be absorbed into the land more, you think doing this will logically cause (slight) increase in the amount of moisture rising into the atmosphere where it will be enough to create a larger area/volume of clouds, and therefore increase the albedo of the earth. Thus cooling the overall global temperature, and simultaneously lowering sea levels.
Do have this essentially correct, is this what you are saying? Let me know.
Now iirc the largest amount of evaporation of water into the atmosphere already comes from the oceans, and not the land. I don’t know the number or have refs to hand. One would need to show why holding back a fraction of the global water content on land would make any difference to total global evaporation and cloud formation. It may not necessarily follow.
Secondly, holding back water flows, therefore retaining more water on land to be better absorbed by the soils etc thus leading to progressive evaporation sound sot me to be a massive physical undertaking. I cannot imagine how that would be done at a scale which could make even the tiniest bit of difference.
Water naturally flows down hill. Everywhere. I cannot imagine a landscape covered in barriers of some kind all the way to the horizon which might effectively slow down this natural water flow after rain, or during floods. Nor can I see how major short term storm water flows in cities after torrential rainfall being redirected to the open ground somewhere nearby upon open landscapes, farms, forests and so on.
I cannot imagine the costs involved in such physical infrastructures being built. Or that any amount of water used in this way making any difference at all to total global evapotranspiration.
The following might useful to review.
Evapotranspiration and the Water Cycle
https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/evapotranspiration-and-water-cycle?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects
Oceans and Seas and the Water Cycle
https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/oceans-and-seas-and-water-cycle?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects
They have several science refs for more info see the Related Science tabs.
As I mentioned above, Dr James Hansen has suggested the best way he knows to cool the temperature of the atmosphere (rapidly) and therefore slow SLR as well, is to engage in geoengineering to increase cloud cover (albedo) by using aerosols (sulphates) in cloud seeding programs.
I am not equipped to calculate the potential of success in doing what you are suggesting. If it could even work as you expect. How much such a thing would cost to implement. So I am deferring to Hansen et al at this point.
But good on you for thinking about it and sharing your ideas with others and asking for feedback.
@reality check
Yes – you essentially understood my concept.
2.7% of global river discharge runoff – becomes evaporation – becomes clouds – becomes albedo + – und thus a cooling RF of -0,2W/m².
4-5 times more than the actual, annual increase of RF (+0,04W/m²).
The whole thing is ingeniously implemented with measures that work against droughts and floods. So our biggest, most dangerous problems with climate change could be solved or mitigated. SLR, increasing temperature, drought, floods & even biodiversity are all related to the presence or absence of water. The volume of 1335km³ transpired by plant grow can absorb an additional amount of 4,9 -9,8Gt CO²
Rapidly advancing desertification and the drop in average global relative humidity is one side – sea levels, hurricanes and heavy rain events are the other.
The drainage of the continents contributes ~ 8% to the rise in sea level and the increased temperatures over land suggest more evaporation in many places, but not in the spreading deserts, deforested rainforests, sealed cities, etc.
The specific humidity in the atmosphere has increased and therefore absorbs more IR radiation, while the lower relative humidity over dry regions ensures less cloud formation. The consequences are more hours of sunshine and even more drought and temperature – imho a dangerous vicious circle that is what makes Kanadian-Sicilian temperature records possible in the first place. The sensible heat flow increases much faster over land than the latent one – over the ocean it is the other way round. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2006GL028164
Expert of the global energy balance of the earth is Prof. M. Wild, also lead author of the latest IPCC 6thAR WG1 ( chapter 7.2.1. & 7.4.2.4.3 ) I was glad to could be able to introduce my artistical cloud project a few weeks ago. Meanwhile I try to secure my predictions.
Have a look to his graphics “land/ocean” & “all sky/clear sky/ CRE” to find quick understanding or look to his publications in ETH-Zürich or internet.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-014-2430-z/figures/2
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00382-018-4413-y
Important to know:
The evaporation energy is the interface between the global radiation balance and the water cycle.
Evaporation energy of water = ~680KWh / m³//e.g. E =82W/m²(24*365) —> 1056mm / year.
land : ocean area = 29 : 71 (with a much huger land mass in NH and a lot of ocean at low latitudes)
3,7mm SLR(1335km³) = 9mm over land area = 27mm over global agriculture area (50 Mio. km²) = ~1% of global mean precipitation over land (~854mm).
The water cycle, evaporation and cloud formation are intensified by an additional 9mm (L) / m² and year over the land area by ~ 1% = 0.7W / m². That corresponds to ~ 0.2W / m² in the global balance. According to Prof. M. Wild, the CRE (cloud radiative effect) is -19W / m², which confirms the + 1% clouds.
Rivers run through the contour lines in the terrain ideally at right angles, while the diversions or “amunas” run parallel to the contour line.
The costs:
In my district (1250km² / 750.000 inhabitants) we need a 3,5km / 50cm diameter pipeline to connect the rhine with a lake near by. I estimate the costs up to 4 Mio. $ – so not really expensive and we could harvest ~12 Mio. m³ per year.
See it as a buisness – here we pay $ 1,50/m³ for clean water.
The impetus for the old Incas was surely survival.
@macias shurly
Thanks for the detailed info. Beyond my capacity to parse it all but i can grasp the ideas. Best wishes and I hope Prof Wild assists. I too am curious about any additional water vapour forcing effect, but iirc globally that’s fairly constant (in the big scheme of things) except when the temps increase over time. Meaning: if additional evaporation is forced at location X it will balanced out overall eventually – so the Net evaporation remains the same (?)
and iirc the global water vapour GHG effect in the atmosphere is greater than the clouds cooling albedo effect. But I could be wrong here, merely pointing it out as a possible significant issue. see the latent heat evaporation and the thermal up surface over oceans, may be far more impactful than any additional soil moisture evaporation using your system. While noting the sensible heat differences, all I can say is that I am not qualified to analyze these competing issues.
And iirc the whole effects of clouds, albedo, precip and aerosols variation are not entirely tied down with certainty in the models CMIP anyway, because they are not accurately measured (?) — similar to your ref mentions “the corresponding fluxes at the Earth’s surface are not equally well established, as they cannot be directly measured from space. (Martin Wild 2019)
And as Hansen notes about human induced aerosols (and natural?) which are not being measured at all. Despite being integral to all climate modelling and every IPCC report and analysis. Basic positive feedbacks (extra warming) and potential tipping points (abrupt permanent changes in the climate system) are still not being imputed into climate models (last I heard) or the IPCC reports. There is much that is still assumed, albeit based on educated expert science.
And with today’s rapidly changing unstable weather/climate affects, and any related increasing feedbacks, are likely to already be shifting these prior assumed norms faster than measurable in real time. Therefore actions like you’re suggesting might be indefinable inconclusive from a science pov at this point. Which is a common state of affairs, IPCC lags the science and science lags the observations the new theories and actual research activity being done.
So if there is something to it, and cost effective as you suggest, then I hope the ideas are respectfully pursued and checked out properly. Good luck with that. And thanks again for your detailed generous response!
Replying to both of you here because the thread was truncated.
Do you both not realize that a huge aspect of regenerative design is the retention of water on-site? This is done in numerous ways, but the three primary and most obvious ones are 1. ponds, 2. water infiltration, 3. use of bio-char/SOC/SOM which hold HUGE amounts of water in the soil. and 4. heavy mulching.
This has the added benefit of also keeping all the minerals, etc., in the soil by limiting runoff, which in turn limits ocean anoxic conditions.
Do regenerative, save the world. Or as the TV show Heroes might have put it, “Save the soil, save the world.”
MS: CO² causes a moderate, warming radiative forcing / H²O a strong cooling one.
BPL: Wrong. Water vapor is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. And the superscripts are incorrect; they should be subscripts.
@BPL & RL
This is now the 2nd time that you have put your thin-minded, clueless summary of your climatic-physical skills on display here and – above my basic knowledge.
Yes – water vapor strongly absorbs long-wave radiation (+ 28W / m²), – but the reflection of short-wave radiation (-47W / m²) is even stronger. This creates a net effect (-19W / m²), which is called * CLOUD *RADIATIVE EFFECT / CRE. — And again: CRF =+0,42Wm-2°C-1 is the Feedback of the clouds in a warmer climate. It is positive because cloud cover and lapse rate are changing in a warmer climate.
https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs00382-018-4413-y/MediaObjects/382_2018_4413_Fig15_HTML.gif?as=webp
BPL: “the superscripts are incorrect; they should be subscripts.”
Tell this to IPCC // Prof. Martin Wild – and 1001 others.
They could substitute the relevant chapters 7.2.1. and 7.4.2.4.3 in the AR6 WG1
and fill it up with a nice photo of your flat head and some fairy tales by Gretel.
I think it’s a good joke that you’re posting hundreds of contributions in a forum on climate research without knowing what – A CLOUD – is.
Perhaps you would be so kind as to mark your future Neanderthal post to inbox RC with
5 (five – take five !) ***** asterisks for excellent comedy.
My “artificial cloud project” is maybe the last chance for mankind to stop SLR and rising global temperatures – and here is a bad place, to reproduce these ideas, because some people here basically don’t understand how a cloud, bathtub or albedo works.
[Response: Sorry, but you are utterly incorrect. Clouds are made of condensate – either ice crystals or water droplets – not water vapor. You have confused long-wave absorption by water vapour (which is transparent in the visible) with that by clouds (which are not). No more please. – gavin]
macias, I think that you should rephrase your “wisdon” wrt water in the atmosphere–to wit, water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas, so increasing water vapor, either via increased temperature w/ constant relative humidity or via increasing RH will warm the planet. The only way things cool is by decreasing incident sunlight or increasing outgoing IR at the top of the atmosphere.
Specific to SL, he is correct: More in the soil, less in the oceans.
Macias Shurle, ,we will be attempting to store huge volumes of water on land every year, for thousands of years. Please consider the sheer scale, how it would add up over time, the impossibility and unimaginable costs of this. And trying to encourage evaporation and thus more clouds to reflect heat is geoengineering that could have bad side effects. We must reduce emissions at source. The climate problem is basically an energy substitution problem.
“Carbon budgets tell us how much CO2 we can emit while keeping warming below specific limits.”
RtW: not quite. And it would be productive to expand that statement:
Carbon budgets tell us how much CO2 natural feedbacks from tipping points and whatnot can emit, plus the bit we might still be able to emit, while keeping warming below specific limits.
There isn’t enough precision and depth to our understanding of the biosphere to confidently say that we would stay below 1.5C if we emitted no more CO2 at all.
A warming planet’s biomes’ species are all mismatched with their climate. Siberia will burn (oops, ‘is burning’). The Amazon will burn. Most everything (or a large enough percentage to warrant hyperbole) will burn and be replaced with species appropriate with the new local climate.
But the warming continues. Another round of burning. Lots of regions degrade into weedy garbage on degraded soil. More carbon is spewed naturally.
Carbon budgets are fun, but they’re an exercise in futility if the biggest player, nature, isn’t fully represented on the supply side. How much carbon is in Siberia?
@Richard How much carbon is in Siberia?
Not sure. But I do know for certain it is a lot less than was there a month ago before all those fires started. Because now it’s in the atmosphere.
Yes, I am absolutely unequivocally certain of this. :)
Reality Check says
15 AUG 2021 AT 9:15 AM
I am calling for a rapid end to the fossil fuel industry. This is the 1st key piece for most people getting out of this alive. The 2nd key piece is reorganizing economics degrowth.
@rc, karsten, richard, thomas
I fully agree with the 1st key piece. However, the 2nd key piece is difficult in a free market economy. Renewable energies are already cheaper today than fossil or nuclear power and, together with the necessary storage facilities, are just as reliable.
Renewables are prevented by a global fossil fuel mafia, which does not want to change its business practices if it dies. Their economic decline is determined by the economic upswing that renewables could have if it were not massively hindered.
This is a fight like against the Roman Catholic Church, which like a hydra has survived all disgusting times and world wars since its birth.
— In addition, economic and energy policy measures are not necessarily part of the field of work in climate science. Therefore again I would like to turn your attention from the warming, positive radiation forcing to the cooling, negative radiation forcing.
The fact that a concept for lowering the rise in sea level und thus lowering the global temperature (and much more) meets with so little interest and criticism, annoys me as an artist enormously. For me it is boring to read through pages long, eternally the same whining without responding to interesting, intelligent resistance. to meet climate change.
An artist who wants to produce authentically real, “artificial” clouds is of course dependent on beings who think along with them, otherwise culture loses its meaning.
To find out more about the strong cooling effect of clouds, I recommend IPCC / AR6th / WG1 / chapter 7.2.1. “Present-day energy budget”.
The cooling CRE is defined as ~ -20Wm-2 and is often confused here by some (@BPL )with the CRF, which is described in chapter 7.4.2.4.3
“The best estimate of net cloud feedback is obtained by summing feedbacks associated with individual cloud regimes and assessed to be αC = 0.42 W m–2° C–1.
…
TOA radiation budgets derived from the CERES satellite observations for the years 2000–2010 is 0.54 ± 0.7 W m–2 °C–1 ”
This positive CRF is a decrease of CRE due to a loss of cloud amount and higher LR(lapse rate).
To produce additional clouds by additional irrigation is a question of volume. My tomatoes can do it, your rain barrel and roof can do it, … 1001 ways to stop global warming and SLR.
Here’s an example of the kind of commentary I find the most depressing. Harder for me to accept or understand than the typical denialist comments made across the media.
It is in an article quoting Joeri Rogelj – The latest UN climate assessment is out and the message is clear: wake up and act now or face the consequences. https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/environment/2021/08/dangerous-climate-change-has-arrived-ipcc-report-warning-world-ahead
That sub-heading is a great start. And then comes this: “Our new estimates show that to have a 50 per cent probability of limiting warming to 1.5°C, we would need to be at net zero in the next 20-25 years,” said Rogelj.
At face value this means if the globe got to Net Zero between 2040 and 2045 then we still only have a 50/50 chance of avoiding +1.5C – knowing that, hearing it, is of no use to anyone. It’s meaningless.
For a start, and Rogelj clearly already knows this, given the present reality the world is not going to get to Net Zero between 2040 and 2045 anyway. So why is he even mentioning that or the 50/50 chance of avoiding +1.5C? This is irrational, and extremely unhelpful.
And seriously, what use is it to only have a 50/50 chance of that working after doing all that hard work cutting emissions? The world needs far better odds than that of being successful.
To me, this is a mind-boggling ridiculous way to be talking to the media about climate change – especially for a scientist and a lead author. It says nothing of value, avoids discussing what’s real, and helps no one understand the issues better.
Why isn’t Rogelj pointing to the more accurate grounded IPCC statements instead?
“The report [..] finds that averaged over the next 20 years, global temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming.
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2021/08/IPCC_WGI-AR6-Press-Release_en.pdf
Or tell the media what’s actually in the report that on any ‘scenario’ the +1.5C barrier is expected to be passed before 2035 (+/-) and even before 2030 if emissions keep rising.
Why can’t Rogelj tell the media the truth anyone could understand like: With the current insufficient COP26 Government commitments to cut emissions the Goal of reaching Net Zero Emissions by 2050 cannot be met.
And subsequently given the very small human-caused Carbon Budget the world has left, remaining under +1.5C the next 20 years is virtually impossible.
So even remaining under +2C this century is also virtually impossible too at this point in time given the projected near term future emissions.
But no, he tells the media incomprehensible and therefore meaningless gobbledygook instead. It truly does my head in.
We deserve better. We need better than this.
Addendum, I should have been more circumspect in my comments, because I do not know if the journalist as accurately represented the quotations contained in the article, or used them as intended or know where he obtained them. So this could be simply another case of poor media reporting (which can never be solved or improved).
RC says: “Why can’t Rogelj tell the media the truth anyone could understand like: With the current insufficient COP26 Government commitments to cut emissions the Goal of reaching Net Zero Emissions by 2050 cannot be met.”
1) Maybe because its not his JOB to make those sorts of judgements, 2) because there’s still a small chance it could be met, and 3) everyone with a functioning brain already knows current commitments aren’t enough. Eh?
Considering the Table SPM.2 from IPCC (2021) for 83% likelihood of remaining below 1.5C is a Carbon Budget of 300 GtCO2 this means this budget could runout in under 7 years in 2028 at 38GtCO2 per annum.
If that annual rate rises or if there is a boost to other variable ghg / nonCO2 sources / other forcing sources such as wildfires, less aerosols, methane, land clearing, and so forth the accounted for Carbon Budget may well expire a year or two earlier near 2026 virtually ensuring breaking the +1.5C Paris goal before 2030. That seems a likely worst case scenario.
But given this is so small a budget position, given all the possibilities and variables, the unknowns, and applying the precautionary principle it’s probably best to operate from a point of view that there is no Carbon Budget left at all. I believe this is where the conversations need to head.
Climate Reality Check
Climate Change is an existential risk to human civilization. Mobilizing for net zero emissions (NZE) by 2030 is critical. A 2050 NZE time-frame will not prevent catastrophic outcomes. A cluster of abrupt climate changes and tipping points could occur between 1.5C and 2.0C. It is well understood by the climate science community that goals to limit warming to under 2.0C are prescriptions for disaster. Longer term targets and promises of future CCS/DAC/BECCS technologies are excuses for procrastination. The world is presently on a path of +3C to +5C of warming by 2100 or soon after which would end civilization as we know it. The current global warming of a +1.2C temperature increase since 1850 is already dangerous.
https://www.climaterealitycheck.net/download
There’s been a big shift and it gaining momentum. Most of the conversations are already heading in that direction. There is very little tolerance left for dodging, dissembling, reticence and times wasters.
Thanks to Dr Rogelj for explaining the calculations and meanings of the tables. I haven’t read Chapter 5 (yet). I have read the Technical Summary and found it illuminating and far less technical than I feared – I’d recommend it to anyone with some undergraduate science. I still have a few questions.
I’m most confused about what happened when the 100 GtCO₂ for Earth system feedbacks, which was a separate item in SR15, got incorporated into the main totals. Why doesn’t it seem to have reduced the central estimates at all? Is that because the estimate has shrunk and is now offset by a change in estimate of warming to date? Does it really include all the biological processes and climate-carbon-cycle-feedbacks that have been identified, like methane from tropical wetlands?
Secondly, on that warming to date, I do wonder why 1850-1900 is used for pre-industrial, when radiative forcings are relative to 1750. Ed Hawkins suggests the Earth warmed 0-0.2 °C in the century or so between the two baselines. Is that too much extra uncertainty to include? It is relevant to policy.
Thirdly, as I understand it all quoted temperatures are now based on modelled air temperatures, rather than land air measurements blended with sea surface temperatures which had been used previously. AR6 suggests these are equivalent and moving in parallel, but I’ve seen some commentary suggesting blended had warmed less. And the Oxford Global Warming Index stands at 1.23 °C based on human factors, which seems so much higher than the 0.8 °C being cited in the early 2010s. How much of that because we’ve started including Arctic warming? About 0.1 °C?
On the page about Sherwood et al (2020), I asked how a narrowing of ECS or TCRE would affect carbon budgets for different probabilities: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/07/climate-sensitivity-a-new-assessment/#comment-772016
Greta Thunberg is now reasonably concentrating on the 83% probability of staying below 1.5 °C warming long-term, leaving a little over 5 years’ worth of current emissions as a central estimate. There was no figure for that in SR15 although it should be possible for readers to estimate. I was wondering if the narrowing of TCRE meant that the 83% budget had actually expanded despite two years having passed.
And a comment to reiterate what has been emphasised, all the remaining carbon budgets relevant to the Paris Agreement are very small and plausibly zero (given the 420 GtCO₂ uncertainty in ZEC?). So far as I can see, any honest response has to prohibit further fossil fuel development at the very least.
Looking at the section on ‘Other Earth system feedbacks’ there is a built-in assumption that this term is linear with temperature increase. (Did I miss something there?) If so is this assumption correct? It seems to me that it has to be non-linear since it involves mutually reinforcing factors including permafrost melting, ice melt raising sea level, increasing black carbon deposition from northern arboreal forest fires and the future effects on all of them of the Arctic ice cap melting. Which would mean the earth system feedbacks are underestimated and this AR6 study is an overestimate of the remaining carbon budget.
Donald, Geoff asked a similar question on August UV. I may be misunderstanding both of you, but when you say “linear with temperature increase”, it sounds like you are unclear about the mechanism in a similar way.
The global mean surface temperature is increasing because the energy in the climate system is increasing due to increasing CO2, but that GMST is determined by all the factors that you mention.
For example, if the permafrost melts, that converts some thermal energy, which would otherwise contribute to increasing GMST, to latent heat, which doesn’t. But then if that melting releases methane and CO2, that contributes to the Greenhouse Effect, so less energy escapes to space, contributing to an increase in GMST. (Similar concept with sea ice and insolation.)
The point is that the people doing the models are hardly unaware of this stuff, and are incorporating all these effects as best they can; that’s where they get the numbers they gave. That the interactions are extremely complex and non-linear is why they are building the models and you and I aren’t, right?
This graph is more useful and far clearer than the ones provided above.
IPCC AR6 Remaining Carbon Budgets for remaining below +1.5C
https://twitter.com/xr_cambridge/status/1430417580976705538?s=20
Pick your Preferred Pathway for fun – doesn’t matter which one – all are fantasy.
Child-Brain thinking is the product of a highly Infantile Narcissistic society – especially at the Elites’ level. Like spoiled three year old brats they are products of a Political Economy that has never been told ‘No’ or ‘Stop.’
Photos taken from the same location in the Arctic 100 years apart.
https://twitter.com/peace1/status/1431403598479560705