A few weeks ago, a study by Copenhagen University researchers Peter and Susanne Ditlevsen concluded that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is likely to pass a tipping point already this century, most probably around mid-century. Given the catastrophic consequences of an AMOC breakdown, the study made quite a few headlines but also met some skepticism. Now that the dust has settled, here some thoughts on the criticisms that have been raised about this study.
I’ve seen two main arguments there.
1. Do the data used really describe changes in AMOC?
We have direct AMOC measurements only since 2004, a time span too short for this type of study. So the Ditlevsens used sea surface temperatures (SST) in a region between the tip of Greenland and Britain as an indicator, based on Caesar et al. 2018 (PDF; I’m a coauthor on that paper). The basic idea starts with the observation that this region is far warmer than what is normal for that latitude, because the AMOC delivers a huge amount of heat into the area. The following chart which I made 25 years ago illustrates this.
If the AMOC weakens, this region will cool. And in fact it is cooling – it’s the only region on Earth which has cooled since preindustrial times. This is commonly referred to as ‘warming hole’ or ‘cold blob’.
We argued in Caesar et al. that the sea surface temperature there in winter is a good index of AMOC strength, based on a high-resolution climate model. (Not in summer when the ocean is covered by a shallow surface mixed layer heated by the sun and highly dependent on weather conditions.) We checked this across other climate models and found that our AMOC index (i.e. based on SST in the ‘cold blob’ region) and the actual AMOC slowdown correlated highly there (correlation coefficient R=0.95).
There are some other indicators, either using measured ocean salinities or using various types of proxy data from sediment cores, e.g. sediment grain sizes at the ocean bottom as indicators of flow speed of the deep southward AMOC branch. The key point to me is: these different indicators provide rather consistent AMOC reconstructions, as we showed in Caesar et al. 2021. The sediment data go back further in time but are likely not as reliable and don’t reach up to the present.
For recent decades there are potentially better approaches like ocean state estimates, and those are also consistent with the SST fingerprint – but these don’t go back far enough in time for the Ditlevsen type of study. The next graph shows a comparison of different reconstructions for the relevant time period used in the Ditlevsen study.
Reconstructions based on salinity may also be good but they depend on precipitation, a notoriously variable quantity so it is rather doubtful whether analysing variance of salinity is doing any better than the SST signal.
The argument has been made that the ‘cold blob’ might not be caused by an AMOC decline but by heat loss at the ocean surface. That’s easy to check: if that were the case, then cooling in the area would be linked to increased heat loss at the surface. But if the AMOC is the culprit, then less heat should be lost, as a cooler ocean surface due to reduced ocean heat transport will lose less heat. The reanalysis data show the latter is the case.
This was shown by Halldór Björnsson of the Icelandic weather service and presented at the Arctic Circle conference 2016. I discussed this here in 2016 and also in my 2018 RealClimate article “If you doubt that the AMOC has weakened, read this”, together with possible other alternative explanations of the ‘cold blob’. We have recently repeated Halldór’s analysis at PIK and got the same results.
My conclusion: for the past century or so the SST data are probably the best AMOC indicator we have, and I don’t see concrete evidence suggesting that it’s unreliable.
2. The Ditlevsen study assumes that the AMOC follows a quadratic curve when approaching the tipping point.
That’s a more technical criticism. Their assumption follows from Stommel’s 1961 simple model of the AMOC tipping point. It results from the basic idea that (a) AMOC changes are proportional to density changes, and (b) the density change results from a balance between freshwater input and AMOC salt transport to the deep water formation (i.e. ‘cold blob’) region. Combined, these two assumptions lead to a quadratic equation.
These are very plausible basic assumptions, albeit using a linear equation of state, but we all know you can linearize things around a given point to get a first-order estimate. The argument that this is “too simple” doesn’t mean it’s wrong; rather this is correct at least to first order.
In a 1996 study I compared the results of a quadratic box model response to a fully-fledged 3D primitive equation ocean circulation model with nonlinear equation of state, the MOM model of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Lab in Princeton. It looks like this.
You can’t get a much better fit than that. A similar quadratic shape has also been found by Henk Dijkstra’s group at Utrecht University in a state-of-the-art global climate model, the CESM model (yet to be published). I have not seen any concrete evidence by the critics suggesting the shape may not be quadratic; that seems to be a purely hypothetical possibility. Also, if it is not exactly quadratic, the stated uncertainty range will be larger but it doesn’t fundamentally change the result.
What does it all mean?
An AMOC collapse would be a massive, planetary-scale disaster. Some of the consequences: Cooling and increased storminess in northwestern Europe, major additional sea level rise especially along the American Atlantic coast, a southward shift of tropical rainfall belts (causing drought in some regions and flooding in others), reduced ocean carbon dioxide uptake, greatly reduced oxygen supply to the deep ocean, likely ecosystem collapse in the northern Atlantic, and others. Check out the OECD report Climate Tipping Points which is well worth reading, and the maps below. You really want to prevent this from happening.
We know from paleoclimatic data that there have been a number of drastic, rapid climate changes with focal point in the North Atlantic due to abrupt AMOC changes, apparently after the AMOC passed a tipping point. They are known as Heinrich events and Dansgaard-Oeschger events, see my review in Nature (pdf).
The point: it is a risk we should keep to an absolute minimum.
In other words: we are talking about risk analysis and disaster prevention. This is not about being 100% sure that the AMOC will pass its tipping point this century; it is that we’d like to be 100% sure that it won’t. Even if there were just (say) a 40% chance that the Ditlevsen study is correct in the tipping point being reached between 2025 and 2095, that’s a major change to the previous IPCC assessment that the risk is less than 10%. Even a <10% chance as of IPCC (for which there is only “medium confidence” that it’s so small) is in my view a massive concern. That concern has increased greatly with the Ditlevsen study – that is the point, and not whether it’s 100% correct and certain.
Would you live in a village below a dammed lake if you’re told there is a one in ten chance that one day the dam will break and much of the village will be washed away? Would you say: “Not to worry, that’s 90 % chance it won’t happen?” Or would you demand action by the authorities to reduce the risk? What if a new study appears, experienced scientists, reputable journal, that says it is nearly certain that the dam will break, the question is only when? Would you demand immediate attention to mitigate this danger, or would you say: “Oh well, some have questioned whether the assumptions of this study are entirely correct. Let’s just assume it is wrong”?
For the AMOC (and other climate tipping points), the only action we can take to minimise the risk is to get out of fossil fuels and stop deforestation as fast as possible. One major assumption of the Ditlevsen study is that global warming continues as in past decades. That is in our hands – or more precisely, that of our governments and powerful corporations. In 2022, the G20 governments alone subsidised fossil fuel use with 1.4 trillion dollars, up by 475% above the previous year. They aren’t trying to end fossil fuels.
Yet, as soon as we reach zero emissions, global warming will stop within years, and the sooner this happens the smaller the risk of passing tipping points. It also minimises lots of other losses, damages and human suffering from “regular” global warming impacts, which are already happening all around us even without passing major climate tipping points.
Links
For more on this, see my long TwiX thread with many images from relevant studies.
What is happening in the Atlantic Ocean to the AMOC?
If you doubt that the AMOC has weakened, read this
AMOC slowdown: Connecting the dots
And for even more, just enter “AMOC” into the search field of this blog!
“as soon as we reach zero emissions, global warming will stop within years,”
Doesn’t this really mean
“as soon as we reach zero emissions, global mean surface temperature will stop increasing within years,”
But after net-zero won’t the Earth’s Energy Imbalance still be well out of balance and ice will keep melting, oceans keep warming and permafrost thawing?
And this won’t stop “within [a few] years”.
I am afraid, the difference between global warming and increase of global mean surface temperature. It seems to be too subtle for me, however, as far as I have learnt so far, you are right. The ice melting and sea level rise will continue all the same, and we probably have already committed to a rise of more than 20 m https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w_p_kF9iW3c .
Global warming ‘should’ mean the Earth is gaining heat.
Heating still happens when surface temperature reaches a maximum. High greenhouse gas concentrations will still be warming the Earth in their blanket.
Surface temperature will be cooled by the oceans (and melting ice) taking the heat from the surface but the Earth as a whole will keep increasing its heat content – for some while.
“It seems to be too subtle for me” – That sounds like false modesty.
The oceans are warmer than the air so the colder air can’t warm the already warm oceans. The oceans are also 2000 times as massive as the air and hold 2000 times as much heat as the air
Your first 6 words are already false, and it goes downhill from there.
The colder air still radiates infrared radiation to the warmer ocean, which warms it. The ocean warms the air more, so net heat transfer is from ocean to air, but without the air the ocean would be a lot colder (in fact, it would be frozen).
To both McKinney and Levenson.
about Ralph Gardner &al:
First time I learnt about this was initially at the University 1.st semester, Guldberg & Waages law of mass action in general chemistery, of microchosmic reactions, that go freely both ways without collisions on the same path or road giving a dynamic balance / eqvilibrium.
It took me only 2 seconds to grasp it because I had seen an ant- road before.
But, the surrealists on their side are thinking in terms of 2 pure racial armies, the red and the blue army in the form of broad showeling STALIN Vs. Adolph bulldozers where the stronger bulldozer or army hand in hand shoulder by shoulder and the stronger and conjugated ideology will stop and showel the weaker one back again on broad front where the earth is flat as a battleground…
Ralph Gardner & al should be psycho- analyzed for such ideas, on where he got it from.
Because, such a psycho- analysis could clear up who is brewing and distilling the secret central stimulants that they get from that certain tank.
Whoose Tank is that and at which special Chateau? Might it perhaps be Think- tank at Chateau Heartland in Michigan? where they boldly proclaim “I am no scientist but…! smile smile….”
Because,
My suspect of whoose basic and secret recepy is
“Die Fahne hoch
die Reihen fest gesclossen
Marschieren wir mit ruhig festem Schritt
Kamraden, die Rotfront und reaktion erschossen
marschiern im Geist in unsern reihen mit!”
SANN!
Such old seasoned and re- distilled war surplus spirits/ ghosts from yeaterday, are lacking elementary aquaintance and experience with the anthills A and B , the one larger and stronger than the other, with an ant-road in between and traffic going both ways, , in peaceful co- existance.
And further of brownian moovements on those anthills and on the road in between.. And that the smaller anthill can strengthen the larger anthill, and vice versa.
Take the one away and the other will leak out and vanish bcause never coming back again.
This is a major old ideological, state religious spiritual syndrom in the surrealists denial of atmospheric back- radiation, that is said to be “against the 2nd law, smile smile”
That repeats and repeats and repeats,……….. .
Geoff Beacon: Aug.27. “ Global warming ‘should’ mean the Earth is gaining heat. Heating still happens when surface temperature reaches a maximum.”
I guess this reflects the most common use/metric of “Global Warming”, which is the increase in the surface air temperature. And there is a defensible justification for this use – this is what matters to humanity and to the terrestrial life – MOST. Melting of ice and transfer of heat to the ocean, obviously affects directly the polar and ocean ecosystems, but does not directly affect us. That’s why to include these other effects I tend to use the “climate change” rather than “global warming”.
Another distinction one could make is that the line says about “zero emissions“, not “stopping the increase in GHG conc. “. “Zero emissions” means that GHG conc. and therefore GHG radiative forcing – DROP, since with zero emissions natural process would start removing GHGs from air.
So the drop in GHG conc. could cause a drop in surface air temp. enough to balance the anthropogenic heat coming out of the oceans into the air. Of course this heat removal would take very long, since >90% of the excess heat went into the oceans.
A thought experiment. You’re a benevolent all powerful policy maker optimizing for maximum societal welfare. You read these paper and understand there is a higher black swan risk (or perhaps grey swan since we actually know about this risk) associated with the AMOC tipping. The timing of this event is unknown and the severity of the impacts on human wellbeing is also unknown but potentially “catastrophic.” Total potential damage is a function of physical impacts (sea level rise, rainfall, etc.), x Human adaptation measures x human development by the point of the tipping. The risk level for the first term is to some degree is impacted by transitioning off fossil fuels and reversing deforestation. Also for the foreseeable future you know you can’t immediately stop burning fossil fuels because human development will be negatively impacted, including widespread starvation from eliminating synthetic fertilizers. What do you do? This is the same question as how much insurance should you buy? Insurance companies know how much to charge your premium because they have reams of data on how the risk actually translates to damage. In this case I have no idea what the damage function really looks like other that, “it might be really bad”.
While I appreciate that the tail risk here is probably higher than we’re pricing in, it’s still not clear what it means for policy making. As much as I want to wish away fossil fuel subsidies, most of these are in the form of direct to consumer subsidies in the developing world given the huge benefits affordable transportation brings for human economic welfare and development. I still don’t have enough information to get a good sense of how much insurance to buy, aka how much public investment and behavioral controls I need to maximize some type of net present value metric of public welfare.
And so we’re left back where we started, with a lot more hand wringing to “do something” but not much ability to negotiate how much something we should do along the continuum of abandoning all climate policy to forcing everyone to become organic farmers.
Widespread starvation is another risk increased by global warming, but not by a switch to renewable energy.
I have nothing against subsidising poor people, but please do it by giving them money, so they can afford more expensive fossil transport but have the freedom to spend it in other ways as well. There is no point in specifically subsidising fossil fuel use. It is unjust, because those using most fossil fuels benefit most, rather then the most needy. The huge subsidies that were payed out in 2022 went to huge windfall profits of fossil fues companies, of a magnitude which alone would go a long way to solve the climate crisis.
The more important point is this: even if there was’nt any global heating problem, we would still need to end fossil fuel use as soon as possible. That’s simply because at the current speed of usage, we will soon (probably far earlier than 2100) run out of fossil fuels. They are non-renewable, we have already used more than half of all there is, the rest will be consumed far faster than what we have already used https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kZA9Hnp3aV4&t=16s&pp=ygURYWxiZXJ0IGEgYmFydGxldHQ%3D , and the remaing part will take more and more energy to extract. Long before it takes the energy in one gallon of oil to extract one gallon, further extraction will of course not be anything but pure madness.
We are already very late in developing alternatives to fossil energy sources and we need much more energy efficiency. Just think about all the energy thrown away to produce completely useless nonsense like commercials, vast amounts of other forms of pure clutter and garbage in the internet etc. Bitcoin “mining” fx.: absolute crackpottery.
In fact, just because of the huge amounts of ancient solar energy concentrated through millions of years in fossil fuels, their use have always been unsustainable and thus a kind of ecological trap for mankind. Cfr. “Burning buried sunshine. Human consumption of ancient solar energy” by Jeffrey S. Dukes, 2003: Just one litre of gasoline contains the energy from 23,5 tonnes of plant matter…
What is done for renewables now, just isn’t changing anything, it just adds to the total amount of energy being used per year. 82 pct. of the total global energy consumption still comes from burning fossil fuels, this number hasn’t changed:
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/renewables-growth-did-not-dent-fossil-fuel-dominance-2022-statistical-review-2023-06-25/
“Renewables Growth Did Not Dent Fossil Fuel Dominance in 2022, Report Says, Reuters, June 26, 2023
Global energy demand rose 1% last year and record renewables growth did nothing to shift the dominance of fossil fuels, which still accounted for 82% of supply, the industry’s Statistical Review of World Energy report said on Monday.
Last year was marked by turmoil in the energy markets after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which helped to boost gas and coal prices to record levels in Europe and Asia.
*The stubborn lead of oil, gas and coal products in covering most energy demand cemented itself in 2022 despite the largest ever increase in renewables capacity at a combined 266 gigawatts, with solar leading wind power growth, the report said.* (My emphasis, KJ)
“Despite further strong growth in wind and solar in the power sector, overall global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions increased again,” said the president of the UK-based global industry body Energy Institute, Juliet Davenport.
“We are still heading in the opposite direction to that required by the Paris Agreement.””
Thus even Bidens “Green new deal” (IRA) isn’t working, it isn’t green. To change the deadly course, the price of fossil fuels has to be made higher and higher compared to the price of renewable energy. This can only be done politically, the market system can never count into the prices of commodities what their consumption costs, because the consumption happens after they are sold and the price has been paid. The only way to do this in a socially responsible and unbureaucratic way, is James Hansen’s proposal: *carbon fee and dividend.* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend .
In theory of course I support limiting direct consumption subsides, but it’s not exactly the same as getting a refund on your taxes in developing countries. You think government officials should be going door to door with checks and tell people, use this for your petrol!
I’m sure you’re also aware riots are the usual response when you try to reduce subsidies and in countries with high corruption and weak democratic governance they’re usually used to buy votes.
You raise valid structural challenges, but nobody is suggesting officials go door to door. Many developing nations have quite high rates of mobile phone penetration–and in fact Kenya is a pioneer of phone-based financial services. So there’s a lot of potential with such systems.
And anyway (and more fundamentally)
why have officials hit the bricks, when most folks will go out of their way for free cash (or equivalent)?
In short, “problems have solutions”–especially when one thinks about them in a clear-eyed fashion.
Shorter: People are stupid, greedy, cruel and pathetic. Even if we have 100% certainty that an effect will happen and will result in great suffering and economic loss, there will be someone out there who thinks, “Hmm, if I can pocket a little more cash, I can insulate myself from the adverse consequences of our actions.”
The people who killed and ate the last of the great Passenger Pigeons knew that they were killing off the last of the breed. But they liked roast squab.
You claim we don’t know what or how much to do? How about “anything” that makes the situation better.
Well put
Sure, but we are doing “anything.” We passed the Inflation Reduction Act (and the European equivalent). We have ESG investing and gobs of private capital going in to clean energy start-ups. Is that enough or not? If not, support your answer as to why not. How does this paper highlighting the possibility of a AMOC tipping point change the calculus?
Not good enough to limit warming to 1.5 °C.
Stefan: – “Not good enough to limit warming to 1.5 °C.”
Per the IPCC’s AR6 WG1 SPM, Table SPM. 1 (on page 14), the Earth System is projected to overshoot the +1.5 °C multi-year global mean warming threshold, for all the five GHG emission scenarios considered (including SSP1-1.9, SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5), before mid-century.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf
It seems to me, even the ‘scholarly reticent’ IPCC is now indicating that the overshooting of the +1.5 °C multi-year global mean warming threshold is UNAVOIDABLE, regardless of any rapid human-induced GHG emissions cuts.
On 22 Feb 2022, the now late Professor Will Steffen gave a lecture shown in the YouTube video titled “The Anthropocene: Where on Earth are we going ” by Will Steffen. Euroapeum Winter School 2022, duration 0:44:47. Recommended viewing. Will Steffen said from time interval 0:27:14:
“So the point is, once you initiate three or four of those, the tipping cascade could be underway. So, this is the real climate emergency. This is why the students are right – we are facing an emergency – 2050 is too late. We need to get to net-zero by 2035 or 2040, which really is an emergency situation. And that raises the question: Are we already losing control of the system, if we cannot stop these tipping points from tipping in time?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2C6NfFIK_g
Everything we are witnessing now is because the current rate of CO₂ and temperature change is almost unprecedented in our entire 4.5 billion-year geological past.
https://twitter.com/CodeRedEarth/status/1695856070118322514
It’s just a first step.
It will be our last step.
The IRA was the first effective climate legislation to pass into law…ever. Let’s not break our arm patting ourselves on the back just yet. Yes, we have ESG–and at the same time we have legislators trying to outlaw ESG.. Yes, we have money going into clean energy. We also have 7 trillion dollars going into fossil fuel subsidies and the Exx-Mob says 2050 emissions will be >2x Paris goals.
People are already dying because Russia refuses to allow Ukranian grain to be exported in sufficient quantity. How much worse will things be when that crop fails due to severe weather?
The first effective climate legislation*in the US *
I would like to know the studies “proving” we need to employ synthetic fertilisers. My garden for sure has not seen any of that. I see that decision makers have to choose between two bad options, but I do not see where the problem is to decide whether it is worse to have unrest and maybe more because of loss of commodities, but to have riots and in the end war because in much of Europe agriculture will not be possible any more. You might want to read the Wikipedia article about the AMOC. There are lined impacts on the disruption of it.
The artificial fertilizer argument seems like a bit of a cherry pick, given that its footprint has been estimated at 2.4% of total emissions:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00706-z#:~:text=Using%20their%20advanced%20lifecycle%20analysis%20method%2C%20Gao%20and,which%20were%20due%20to%20their%20use%20in%20croplands.
Not to say that 2.4% can’t be problematic, but it’s not exactly at the head of the list, is it? Especially since most of our mainstay crops are already up against heat tolerance limits in sizable chunks of the globe, especially the tropics.
Random citation:
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4395/8/7/128
Note estimates of current yield reductions.
Dave M wrote: “you can’t immediately stop burning fossil fuels because human development will be negatively impacted, including widespread starvation from eliminating synthetic fertilizers”
You just equated “stop burning fossil fuels” with “eliminating synthetic fertilizers”, which is complete nonsense.
Very well written article. Thanks for continuing to provide updates on the weakening AMOC and its potential consequences.
Thankyou. Am I correct in stating that the models suggest you need a doubling of freshwater flux to trigger the tipping point? Does that occur because ice sheet melt matches precipitation levels? What drives the ditlesven results? The SST only seems to suggest a +/- 5 % change in AMOC flow/ freshwater flux? I think I read somewhere they used RCP8.5? Also, I think the DO events were rapid warming. So does that mean they were triggered by negative fluxes – like permanent sea ice formation?
The distance to the tipping point varies between models and is likely too large in most models, see point 8 in https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/what-is-happening-in-the-atlantic-ocean-to-the-amoc/.
They did not use RCP8.5.
DO events are due to a northward shift of the AMOC flow, into the Nordic Seas (as it is now and has been since the start of the Holocene, see my Nature review linked in the post).
Thanks. Reading the paper, they seem to assume a linear trend in lambda which is weakly suggested by the timeseries data (it could arguably be bimodal). Going back to the model, that would be driven by linear increases in fresh water flux. Is it the rate of warming or the level which drives the melting rate? I think its mainly level due to high latent heat capacity?
Thx a lot Steffan for the nice update, now I can follow your reasoning much better. Especially, that the cold blob is only a proxy for AMOC slowdown in winter, but not during summer – this I did not know – so meltwater is fully out of the game (the last time I studied the AMOC was 2017, since then I just follow the discussion). And the contradictions of measurements of the AMOC come with a much greater uncertainty and the higher number of studies that measurement a weakening of the AMOC are supported by the cold blob during winter – looks now much more robust to me.
I have two related questions:
Could a freshwater release of the accumulated freshwater in the Beauford Gyre into the North Atlantic due to circulatory changes be a viable mechanism for a serious disruption of the AMOC?
If so, could a sea ice-free Arctic during summer cause such a circulatory change as summer sea ice could be lost as soon as 2030 onward?
Because if question A is a yes then the answer of question B should be a research priority…
The latest study on summer sea ice loss I know came to the conclusion via observational constraints (That’s the reason I go with this one). Another recent one projected sea ice loss during summer as early as 2035 and a paleontologic one also..
I just write a chapter on all the feedbacks and developments that are happening in the Arctic concerning sea ice loss and it ain’t look good the more I progress (I structure my knowledge by writing thereby going into the details) – Arctic sea ice loss is one huge feedback cascade of dozens of developments inside and outside the Arctic often mutually reinforcing with sea ice thinning being at the center of it all with some vicious cycles (in itself reinforcing feedbacks) involved…
All the best
Jan
p.s. here are the three studies projecting a sooner complete sea ice loss:
5: “Sea-ice-free Arctic during the Last Interglacial supports fast future loss”; Maria-Vittoria Guarino, Louise C. Sime, David Schröeder, Irene Malmierca-Vallet, Erica Rosenblum, Mark Ringer, Jeff Ridley, Danny Feltham, Cecilia Bitz, Eric J. Steig, Eric Wolff, Julienne Stroeve, Alistair Sellar; Nature Climate Change, vol. 10, 2020; DOI: 10.1038/s41558-020-0865-2; online: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0865-2 (06.05.2023)
6: “Probability assessments of an ice-free Arctic: Comparing statistical and climate model projections”; Francis X. Diebold, Glenn D. Rudebusch; Journal of Econometrics, 2021; DOI: 10.1016/j.jeconom.2020.12.007; online: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304407620304012 (10.21.2022)
7: “Observationally-constrained projections of an ice-free Arctic even under a low emission scenario”; Yeon-Hee Kim, Seung-Ki Min, Nathan P. Gillett, Dirk Notz, Elizaveta Malinina; Nature Communications, vol. 14, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-38511-8; online: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38511-8 (06.05.2023)
Sea ice melt certainly can weaken the overturning circulation in two ways: by releasing fresh water (we estimated this to be a non-negligible contribution, I think it was in the 2015 AMOC paper) and also by warming the surface waters as a result of the albedo change -> much more solar radiation absorbed.
If sea ice is lost fast, that surely is a concern also for possible ocean circulation impacts.
Thx Steffan, highly interesting that sea ice formation during autumn and winter and sea ice melt during spring and summer have opposing effects on deep water formation – just asked myself if a fresher ocean surface leads to faster rates of sea ice formation but less brine being released into the upper ocean thus minimizing the effect of sea ice formation to deep water formation. Did not find something but lots of other interesting stuff.
As I expect interested people here are some recent findings/explanations/developments I found interesting all indicating large changes in the Arctic Ocean circulation:
First things first – where the deep convection (deep water formation – sinking water) centers are:
“Observations over the past 20 years show that mixing at the end of the winter can reach a depth of 1000 m in areas of the Labrador Sea (Våge et al. 2009; Yashayaev and Loder 2017), the Irminger Sea (de Jong and de Steur 2016), and the Greenland Sea (Brakstad et al. 2019). These deep-water formation sites are the main sources of dense water contributing to the renewal of North Atlantic Deep Water and, thus, setting the strength of the AMOC.” (1)
Here is a map of the regions: https://oceanobservatories.org/2019/07/ooi-moorings-provide-sustained-observations-of-the-irminger-sea-deep-western-boundary-current/
The deep water formation would move with the retreating sea ice further north but will not be able to compensate for a weakening AMOC:
“As deep mixing occurs in the open ocean close to the sea ice edge, the strength and vertical extent of the AMOC is likely to respond to ongoing and future sea ice retreat. Here, we investigate the link between changes in Arctic sea ice cover and AMOC strength in a long simulation with the EC-Earth–Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM) climate model under the emission scenario RCP8.5. The extended duration of the experiment (years 1850–2300) captures the disappearance of summer sea ice in 2060 and the removal of winter sea ice in 2165. By introducing a new metric, the Arctic meridional overturning circulation (ArMOC), we document changes beyond the Greenland–Scotland ridge and into the central Arctic. We find an ArMOC strengthening as the areas of deep mixing move north, following the retreating winter sea ice edge into the Nansen Basin. At the same time, mixing in the Labrador and Greenland Seas reduces and the AMOC weakens. As the winter sea ice edge retreats farther into the regions with high surface freshwater content in the central Arctic Basin, the mixing becomes shallower and the ArMOC weakens. Our results suggest that the location of deep-water formation plays a decisive role in the structure and strength of the ArMOC; however, the intermittent strengthening of the ArMOC and convection north of the Greenland–Scotland ridge cannot compensate for the progressive weakening of the AMOC.”
(1) “Transient Increase in Arctic Deep-Water Formation and Ocean Circulation under Sea Ice Retreat”; https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/35/1/JCLI-D-21-0152.1.xml
Here about the recent decline of deep convection in the Greenland Sea:
“We investigated wintertime convection evolution in recent years over the Greenland Sea. This area is a major location regarding dense water production and supply of the lower limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, a key component of the global climate. Previous studies mentioned an increase in Greenland Sea wintertime convection intensity during the 2000s in comparison with the previous decade till 2015/2016. Here, we further document the ongoing oceanic changes within the Greenland Sea through the Mercator Ocean Physical System, an operational ocean model with data‐assimilation. The model has shown a large variability, a later start and a decline of convection in the Greenland Sea in recent years. In particular, the depth of the annual maximum mixed layer diminished by 52% between 2008–2014 and 2015–2020, from 1,168 to 559 m, over the convective area. This decline of the convection depth is corroborated with Argo float observations.”
Especially the differences in the mixed layer depth I found WOW!
“Recent Convection Decline in the Greenland Sea: Insights From the Mercator Ocean System Over 2008–2020”; https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371067315_Recent_Convection_Decline_in_the_Greenland_Sea_Insights_from_the_Mercator_Ocean_System_over_2008-2020
Cold air outbreaks from ice covered surfaces over warm water near the sea ice edge seem to be very important for deep water formation in the Greenland See – and they are projected to decrease in intensity:
“One important mechanism of dense-water formation in the Nordic seas is open-ocean convection (sinking water). This takes place within the cyclonic Greenland Sea Gyre, where doming of dense isopycnals reduces stratification and preconditions the water column for wintertime convection (e.g., Marshall and Schott 1999). The Greenland Sea Gyre also experiences severe heat loss to the atmosphere during winter (Moore et al. 2015). The cooling and densification of the surface layer initiates convective overturning and the production of dense water. Approximately 60%–80% of the total heat lost to the atmosphere in this region during winter occurs during intense, short-lived cold-air outbreaks (CAOs; Papritz and Spengler 2017). Marine CAOs occur when cold polar air masses over land and ice are advected over relatively warm water, leading to large ocean to atmosphere heat fluxes near the sea-ice edge. Over the past 50 years the sea-ice edge has retreated toward Greenland, which has led to a reduced intensity of CAOs and an overall decline in winter heat loss over the gyre (Moore et al. 2015; Somavilla 2019; Dahlke et al. 2022; Moore et al. 2022). This has, and is projected to continue having, substantial ramifications for water-mass transformation in the central Greenland Sea.”
“The Impact of Cold-Air Outbreaks and Oceanic Lateral Fluxes on Dense-Water Formation in the Greenland Sea from a 10-Year Moored Record (1999–2009)”; https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/phoc/53/6/JPO-D-22-0160.1.xml
Something similar in the Labrador Sea – atmospheric cooling events of the ocean surface could be more important than freshwater fluxes from Greenland/precipitation in the future – so two mechanisms that reinforce each other as it seems:
“Labrador Sea Water (LSW) is one of the main contributors to the lower limb of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. In this study, we explore the sensitivity of LSW formation to model resolution, Greenland melt, absence of high-frequency atmospheric phenomena, and changes in precipitation. We use five numerical model simulations at both (1/4)° and (1/12)° resolutions. A kinematic subduction approach is used to obtain the LSW formation rate over the period 2004 to 2016. The control simulation, with (1/4)° resolution, showed a mean annual production rate of 1.9 Sv (1 Sv = 106 m3/s) in the density range of 27.68–27.80 kg/m3 for the period 2004–2016. Deep convection events that occurred during 2008, 2012, and 2014–2016 were captured. We found that with (1/4)° resolution the LSW formation rate is 19% larger compared with its counterpart at (1/12)° resolution. The presence of Greenland melt and an increase in the precipitation impact the denser LSW layer replenishment but do not decrease the overall LSW formation rate nor the maximum convection depth. A dramatic response was found when filtering the atmospheric forcing, which induced a decrease of 44% in heat loss over the Labrador Sea, strong enough to halt the deep convection and decrease the LSW formation rate by 89%. Even if our experiment was extreme, a decrease in the storms crossing the Labrador Sea with a consequent reduction in the winter heat loss might be a bigger threat to deep convection and LSW formation in the future than the expected increases in the freshwater input.”
“Sensitivity of Labrador Sea Water Formation to Changes in Model Resolution, Atmospheric Forcing, and Freshwater Input”; https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JC014459
And here on pulses of fresh water into the seas south of Greenland – an exceptional event happened recently:
“The Subpolar North Atlantic is prone to recurrent extreme freshening events (i.e., when the salinity decreases abruptly) called Great Salinity Anomalies (GSAs). As the circulation spreads them around the subpolar region, they indirectly contribute to the reduction of deepwater formation and weakening of the vertical transport of heat and anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the ocean. Here, we combine historical and new moored temperature and salinity records to document the arrival, spreading, and impacts of the most recent GSA in the Irminger Sea. This GSA led to a rapid freshening of the Irminger Sea between 2015 and 2020, 2–4 times faster than the freshening rates registered in the previous 10 years. This event culminated in annually averaged salinities as low as the freshest years of the 1990s and possibly since 1960. Tracking the GSA’s path in the subpolar gyre, we found that the GSA flows with the boundary currents along the basin’s rim within months while other processes slowly spread the fresher waters to the central Irminger Sea. The accumulation of fresher waters in the basin’s center freshened the deep water formed during the 2017–2018 winter and actively contributed to the halt of deepwater formation in the following two winters.”
“Arrival of New Great Salinity Anomaly Weakens Convection in the Irminger Sea”; https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2022GL098857
Here is another study on this exceptional freshening event caused my fresh water from the Arctic – so these pulses that could disrupt the AMOC are already starting – maybe:
“The Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation is important to the climate system because it carries heat and carbon northward, and from the surface to the deep ocean. The high salinity of the subpolar North Atlantic is a prerequisite for overturning circulation, and strong freshening could herald a slowdown. We show that the eastern subpolar North Atlantic underwent extreme freshening during 2012 to 2016, with a magnitude never seen before in 120 years of measurements. The cause was unusual winter wind patterns driving major changes in ocean circulation, including slowing of the North Atlantic Current and diversion of Arctic freshwater from the western boundary into the eastern basins. We find that wind-driven routing of Arctic-origin freshwater intimately links conditions on the North West Atlantic shelf and slope region with the eastern subpolar basins. This reveals the importance of atmospheric forcing of intra-basin circulation in determining the salinity of the subpolar North Atlantic.”
“”Ocean circulation causes the largest freshening event for 120 years in eastern subpolar North Atlantic”; https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14474-y
Here a study on the recent reversal of the cooler then normal Subpolar North Atlantic to a warming phase starting in 2016 expected to last for the next years – could be important for my sea ice chapter:
“The Subpolar North Atlantic is known for rapid reversals of decadal temperature trends, with ramifications encompassing the large-scale meridional overturning and gyre circulations, Arctic heat and mass balances, or extreme continental weather. Here, we combine datasets derived from sustained ocean observing systems (satellite and in situ), idealized observation-based modelling (advection-diffusion of a passive tracer), and a machine learning technique (ocean profile clustering) to document and explain the most-recent and ongoing cooling-to-warming transition of the Subpolar North Atlantic. Following a gradual cooling of the region that was persisting since 2006, a surface-intensified and large-scale warming sharply emerged in 2016 following an ocean circulation shift that enhanced the northeastward penetration of warm and saline waters from the western subtropics. The long ocean memory of the Subpolar North Atlantic implies that this advection-driven warming is likely to persist in the near-future with possible implications for the Atlantic multidecadal variability and its global impacts.”
“A shift in the ocean circulation has warmed the subpolar North Atlantic Ocean since 2016”; https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00120-y
This one is also interesting:
“Exceptional freshening and cooling in the eastern subpolar North Atlantic caused by reduced Labrador Sea surface heat loss”; https://os.copernicus.org/articles/18/1507/2022/
All the best
Jan
p.s. and thx Steffen for your articles and comments on the AMOC on RealClimate, as my understanding improved on this topic via your expertise and comments from your colleagues – fascinating stuff!
@ Jan Umsonst
This looks better this time. If one can better understand it, one can also better live with it.
I have been wondering very much since the TV showed underwater photos of large frozen flaky ice structures u0 from the sea bottomj in Antarktis, that are real. I have no explaination for that yet.
Something to be known all the time is the molal freezing point depression of water, that makes seawater with dissolved salts freeze well under zero celsius. By that effect you can study the dissociation grade of salts and other substances. HCl and NaCl for instance gives doubble freezing point depression because it is fully dissociated into free ions in aqueous solution. Then try HAc, acetic acid, that hardly dissociates, only 10E-5 or something. Or SnCl4, a fameous covalent substance.
Molal freezing point depression measurements are also used for making iso- ton solutions, that have finely regulated osmotic pressure Brackish water is iso- ton to the tears so you feel nothing by opening your eyes in brackish water. it is done for not to disturb cell membrane activities and potensials.
Then I ask further what about the max density curve of water? does max density also sink to lower temperatures if the water is salted? I never found material on it and that would be important.
I once had an icebath in a cylindic glass at room temperature . Clear water did build up at the bottom, After all the precise data with zero reference, the glass termometer at the bottom showed +4 Celsius.
I had got a Hypo- limneon in the professional laboratory glass and taken that for zeo celsius reference..
Pity, SIC! for the precise data.
But it would be so easy to check up. Seawater with crushed sea ice floating in a large cylindric glass with a long glass thermometer, standing at room temperature. …Do not stirr it. Observe…. … explain….
Then we have “Sarr” that is ice crystals or rather snow crystallizing in stirred water when it freezes rapidly.
Sarr is known both in rushing rivers on land and make them freeze from the bottom , And by fisherboats in the Barents sea in winter storms. I have never withnessed it.
Sarr is dangerous and can also clog the engines ” safely” underwater coolwater intake.
As a resident of the UK I’m curious as to if the AMOC collapsed, would the regional climate cool enough for glaciers to form on the highest Scottish mountains (assuming the cooler climate persisted for a long time)?
@ Adam lea
As I understand it now, the atlantic will overturn in any case, but the Modus- Modul in which it streams and where it overurns may rapitly change and “switch over” into anothe maqjor current form and “Mode”.
And as I can see it, it now overturns less and less near Grønland and Island and more and more in the Arctic bassin.
The glaciers in norway are rather rapidly vanishing and it warms up most rapidly in the Barens sea and eastward. .
Conclusion English winery and even Scotsc seems like a good idea for the future.
Believe it or not, we have ripening Vitis vinifera here at 60 deg north 150 m uphill in a northslope, even the some more termophile type Muscat bianco a petites grains. Imported by the swedes and planted first in Norways hottest hole Oslo downtown and pissed on. .
Winery at St.Andrews, yes!
The return of Scottish glaciers has been suggested would not need much of a temperature drop, with the last of the Scottish glaciers disappearing more recently than previously thought, although such a recent Scottish glacier is a finding not without controversy.
Dear Dr. mA Rodger
Look a bit over to Fennoscandia and to Island.
“Glacier” is too unprecise.
Jøkull is is a convex round glacier with icy top that floats out to all sides and sinks right down at highest, that is called “Høgste breakulen” Kolle, etym. maybe Scull without hairs and horns.
Fonne is a snow- fane that may be small and not show up every year. It may come and go from year to year depending of winter snow and summer warmth and rain..
Fonner rather than “glaciers” is what may have been, and to be looked for in Scotland, new ones and relicts of older ones.
I found at Wikipedia, but you have to koow several other languages there, that Fonn is the daughter of Snær, who is a female Jotne, see Jotunheimen. This is obviously Very well understood in the climate from early on.
Schneefahne in Germany, that is directly Fonne. A Fonne is not necessarily a glacier.
Fonn may indeed have been seen in Scotland also.
Then look out for Blå- is, blue ice….. where last winter snow has melted and old floating and mooving ice can be seen in summer and august before snow comes again. And seen in glacer- falls and glacier – streams. even “Calving” into lakes and even into saltwater making icebergs.
” Botner” fom Bottom, is concave & steep formations grinding and erx- caving out the rocks. Relicts of “Botner” should be easily found in Scotland and even Wales from the little ice age “LIA”.
. You see snowspots uphill in late summer and can wonder wether they will melt before new winter. That is Fonner and Botner. (r is plural).
A big snowstorm that is not regular, will have made “fonner” remaining now and then but not every year. They do not deliver old blue ice, blå- is. The snowplough macineries deliver snø– fonner at the roadsides until late spring maybe even late summer.
There is glacial flora to be known, that shows this in the mountains. Flora that can survive and is adapted to sites that are not snow and ice free every year.
And then Nunataks in Grønland, very sharp mountain peaks that stand above the floating and mooving glaciers, and get grinded and eroded at the sides even through the little ice age and even the larger ice ages. Matterhorn in Germany, and Mt.Everest. Also found in Antarktis.
Bitihorn, Fanaråki, Romsdalshorn Skagastølstinderne, in Norway. Often called ….horn, Cornus… because they look like.
Se also Lofotveggen, the Lofoten wall. Those are Nunataks. that were ice- free at the edge of, standing above the large main glacier in the last ice age.
Todays Antarktis and Grønland mountain peaks show the same.
Also called “Gipfel” in Germany. Tinder from Teeth, in Norway.
Sweden has also got permanent remanent traces of blue ice at the bottoms, and mountain peaks, in the Kiruna and Kebnekaise- area national parks. .
Rondane is where the mouintains are rounded and there were högste breakulen in southern Norway, areas with oldest ground fossiles because the the ice rather sinks right down in the middle of a large jøkull glacier. .
This alltogether is called “Glaciology” to be seen and studied and remembered and taken for serious, not given a damn to, in the climate dispute.
How granular in detail are the parameters of the cold blob identified? Has there been any direct correlation studies in how much temperature variance has happened by time of year and compared to the freshwater run off from Greenland? It’s only recently that I learned that nearly all existing climate models in use by the IPCC don’t use Greenland freshwater runoff in the models? If true then, given that this melt year looks set to beat 2012 and next year will probably smash the record, this worries me greatly.
Simon McGill: – “It’s only recently that I learned that nearly all existing climate models in use by the IPCC don’t use Greenland freshwater runoff in the models? If true then, given that this melt year looks set to beat 2012 and next year will probably smash the record, this worries me greatly.”
In the YouTube video by glaciologist Professor Jason Box, published 30 Sep 2022, titled Greenland zombie ice and committed sea level rise, duration 0:05:15, from time interval 0:04:05, a graph of Greenland projected Sea Level Rise (SLR) is displayed, comparing the IPCC’s AR6 SSP585 high emissions scenario with the 2022 Jason Box et. al. paper findings, and Jason Box says (bold text my emphasis):
“Our findings in comparison to current sea level projections, confront us with a shocking reality: The much larger, already locked-in sea level rise, than what ice sheet models project by end-of-century, even under high carbon emissions. Our numbers are twice as large, and don’t even include future warming. The comparison reinforces the likelihood that ice sheet models don’t deliver ice quickly enough, and for a number of known reasons, like today’s models don’t realistically treat underwater melting, bare ice darkening, ice internal heating from increasing meltwater infiltration, and basal lubrication, to name a few.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHbZysQYRO4
I’d suggest the data indicates that the Greenland melt season for this year (2023) is now highly unlikely to beat the 2012 record year. See Fig 1a – The bottom graph shows daily melt area from April 1 to August 27, 2023, with daily melt area for other high melt years, plus the record high year of 2012. The thick gray line depicts the average daily melt area for 1981 to 2010.
https://nsidc.org/greenland-today/2023/09/late-season-melt-spike/
See also the Greenland surface melt extent interactive chart:
https://nsidc.org/greenland-today/greenland-surface-melt-extent-interactive-chart/
But the North Atlantic mean daily SST reached a record 25.38 °C (77.68 °F) on 8 Sep 2023. Is this year’s maximum possibly still ahead?
https://twitter.com/EliotJacobson/status/1700530515064029557
But will next year (2024) be an entirely different matter? We’ll see in the fullness of time.
https://mailchi.mp/caa/uh-oh-now-what-are-we-acquiring-the-data-to-understand-the-situation
Stefan; – “Yet, as soon as we reach zero emissions, global warming will stop within years, and the sooner this happens the smaller the risk of passing tipping points.”
It seems to me your statement contradicts with what is indicated in the beginning of the Abstract of the Hansen et. al. preprint paper titled Global warming in the pipeline (version 3, dated 23 May 2023):
https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.04474
Leon Simons tweeted on Aug 26:
https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1695158077719289958
And sea level rise (SLR) certainly won’t stop even if humanity stops GHG emissions ASAP.
On 22 August 2022, at the Cryosphere 2022 Symposium at the Harpa Conference Centre Reykjavik, Iceland, glaciologist Professor Jason Box said from time interval 0:15:27:
“And at this level of CO₂, this rough approximation suggests that we’ve committed already to more than 20 metres of sea level rise. So, obviously it would help to remove a hell-of-a-lot of CO₂ from the atmosphere, and I don’t hear that conversation very much, because we’re still adding 35 gigatonnes per year.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE6QIDJIcUQ
What’s required to avoid worst-case catastrophic conditions for humanity in the coming decades?
http://www.climatecodered.org/2023/06/three-climate-interventions-reduce.html
It is correct that ice melt and sea level rise will not stop for centuries after we stopped the rise in global temperature.
Rahmstorf
Dies ist (sorry…)….
This is!…. a bit better in the direction of what can be undeerstood and taken for serious
I shall keep outlook for tipping points. They are quite common and normal and I am quite experienced but one may overlook and even forget them.
The slipping point of rubber on roads with spikes more or less, that is a fameous one.
Banana shales on the pavement,… they can be foreseen.
Then you have the breaking of thin ice,…. and of thin branches. There may, and there may not be early signals and warnings.
” ice melt and sea level rise will not stop for centuries”
What about permafrost thaw? Is this a feedback properly accounted for in climate models?
Are other feedback effects likely to be contiuing?
e.g. Forest fires? Albedo changes?
If the AMOC did collapse it would be an awful thing to happen in general, but would it be good for polar bears and other animals that live in the arctic?
An AMOC collapse would mean lower temperatures in the arctic and higher sea ice extent, and the lack of sea ice is what is killing off polar bears. If the sea ice extent increases after a possible AMOC shutdown, the polar bear population could recover.
(waves fingers in your direction) “Making Europe above 40 degrees north much colder and equatorial regions even hotter is may not be the “benefit” you are looking for.”
@ jgnfld
Thaqt is an important argument also against our desert-walkers, blind believers in the scriptures and
latent flux evapotranspiring global coolers.
sahara is there due to a hadley cell where it goes up and rains back at eqvator, then travels north very high up and sinks down as föhnwind onto Sahara drying i9t up, and then cycles back to the congo rainforest again.
and thus it is allmost all over the globe, a lot of further hadleycells with foggy rainy stormy tradewinds and highpressure pacifics…
They are driven by solar with water involved for the H2O vapour very light gas air- lift, so what if you cool that thermo dynamic cycle on the wrong spot, in the heater instead of in the boiler?
The congo bassin will probably heata bit up and dry a bit out by solar..
There is arcaeological evidence of that from max holocene, up to 6000 years ago both in Sahara and in Congo. Maybe also Amazonas with related deserts north and south.
I am no expert on this, but it seems to me that less qualified people are selling and exelling in rumors.
Icebears are very adaptible and can easily go and live on land also. They are closely related and do interbreed with the brownbears. The worst threat to them seems to be human interference and hunting, and human activities whaling and fishing taking away their possible food, and settling into their habitat with modern weapons.
Icebears Ursus maritimus is a quite new species, and has survived practically icefree periods in the arcic in the last one million years.
Brownbears Ursus Arcticus has learnt to shy away from humans all over Eurasia and survives that way. But Ursus maritimus has not learnt that yet.
Carbomantanus
Ok the bears may survive climate change and find food on land, but there are already some unintended consequences:
‘Mass Invasion’ of Polar Bears Descends on Remote Russian Village in Search of Food
The bears are searching for sustenance as climate change melts down sea ice.
BY SAM BLUMPUBLISHED: FEB 12, 2019
A large number of polar bears have descended on a remote Russian village located in the northeastern Arctic island of Novaya Zemlya, searching for sustenance as climate change dwindles their food supply.
Authorities have declared a state of emergency over the influx in bears, which have foraged through homes and reportedly attacked people as they roam through the village, per CNN. State news agency TASS calls the situation a “mass invasion.”
The onslaught has been particularly bad in the small hamlet of Belushya Guba, which has reported 50 sightings of polar bears since December, according to the report. Between six and ten polar bears are present at the settlement at any given time, says TASS.
Authorities have had a hard time corralling the animals and luring them away from the village: The bears failed to respond to police patrols and signals that could potentially scare them off, according to the BBC, and it’s illegal to shoot them, owing to their endangered status. Short of less violent options, the only alternative might be to cull the population, although Russia’s main environmental watchdog has so far refused to issue hunting licenses to civilians.
Polar bears face a fight to survive as climate change presents an uncertain future: The animals typically hunt seals as they burrow in sea ice. As green house gas emissions warm the globe and prompt the melting of sea ice, polar bears are forced to continue their pursuit of sustenance on land. Their need of food packed with calories only heightens the alarm, as a study published in Science last year noted the animals burn roughly calories 12,325 a day.
That’s exactly why Belushya Guba is seeing an unprecedented deluge of polar bears. According to Ilya Mordvintsev, lead researcher at the Severtsev Institute of Ecology and Evolution, the bears are migrating in search of food, albeit at the height of a frosty winter as opposed to the balmier months of spring.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a26287577/polar-bear-invasion-russia/
@ Nigelj
Thankyou for your kind reply and nice understanding of bears.
I have an obvious solution to this..
In Tibet they have 4 ways of getting buried To water, to the fire, to0 the earth, and to the air, depending..
IThe Shamans are turning all their prayer wheels to find out, and if to the air, your body is carried our in procession to the heathers. Where a smoke signal has been hiven for days,forv all the gribs to assemble.
The People are standing a bit away from it and your body is then hacked into small enougyh pieces that are thrown to the gribs.
Who then lift off again very heavy loaded and you are being shit out to all over Tibet, that becomes even greener as before.
I would suggest a large meat grinder on Franz Josefs land, and be able to bequeat yor body to the icebears. And a certain “undertaker” if he finds your body “worthy” of it, bring it up there for re cycling. Because when we take everyting from them, we should also give them something back.
Huh?
If you watch the kinds of nature shows that we get here on PBS, you know that polar bears are specifically adapted to an aquatic environment, for instance to hunting seals and walrus. You don’t find a lot of seals poking their heads up through breathing holes on land.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/polar-bear-fact-sheet/
The fact that climate change is forcing them to create little pizzlies with brown bears is just another sign that all is not well in the far north.
Condensed report from the WEF (yeah, I know– there are linked sources):
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/12/polar-bears-and-climate-change-what-does-the-science-say/
Shorter story: Having to conduct more of their lives on land means increased stress on their overall health as well as other biomes, including those with humans.
Not only have Maritimus bears not learned to shy away, they still consider humans as a nice food source.
I’m rooting for the bears!
GO BEARS!
Not me! I’m a Steelers man!
Yes, the icebears, arent they marvellous?
Anything a bear can do, an icebear cando better.
Hecan walk on 2 up your pavement and knock at your front door, shake hands and say “I would like to have you for dinner.
And after dinner open your cooler and empty all your beer cans, and take your manuscripts for serviette, and go to sleep in your bed to sleep out and digest all this.
On Svalbard in the winter night they heard a knocking at the door. And looked out the small window and saw 2 red shining eyes in the darkness looking in.
So they took the gun and shot right in between those 2 eyes. And thought that now it is settled and went out to see.
But as they came out they found no bear, but obvious footprint of 2 bears. That had stood at the window looking in. The left bear closing his right eye and the right bear closing his left eye, wnen lookinh in, so they hade shot right between.
Nigel: “‘Mass Invasion’ of Polar Bears Descends on Remote Russian Village in Search of Food”
This actually has serious scientific/conservation policy implications. In the Canadian North often the trends seen by the polar bear researchers do not square with the trends seen by the Inuit and with their traditional knowledge. The latter would say – we see more polar bears so the population must be healthy, let’s increase the polar bear hunt quota. The former would say – the reason you see them more is because they can’t find food in traditional places (seals on ice), so they look for food on land and/or in human settlements garbage.
Hunting polar bears is important culturally and economically to the Inuit, so they tend to err on the …”optimistic” side. Which reminds that no group can be automatically trusted to do things right, just because of their traditional use of other species. The nature does not care about human traditions rights beliefs, or who was here first.
Speaking of ecological consequence of polar bears losing the ice as the hunting platform for hunting seals – I had a student who for her summer work went into the Arctic to observe breeding of eider ducks, geese and other waterfowl on an isolated from the land island. Everything was going great until a hungry polar bear swum up and cleaned up all the eggs and ducklings. No more breeding to be observed that year.
I guess that’s why guillemots and gulls squat on the vertical cliffs. If they can find a good one –
which may not be easy – sheer fall making it inaccessible to 4-legged predators, yet enough nooks and crannies that you can rest there and your eggs won’t roll off the cliff, AND for guillemots close enough to the sea that when their hatchlings take their first flight, well, more like a desperate, wobbly 45 deg. fall, your tiny wings and feet spread wide, and land on water or at least on a beach next to it.
The eider ducks and geese are probably too big to fit there – so they relied on the sea inaccessibility of their island and on polar bears having enough seals to not to bother with their little ones.
The other thing about disappearance of ice – the malevolent bullies of the sea – orcas – previously stayed away for the fear of being trapped in the ice with no opening to breath. Now they move north
and I can imagine a tired polar bear, having to swim over much larger distances (we have seen a mother and two large cubs in open water without any ice or land even on the horizon ) meeting a pod of orcas …
The Orchas must also have something to eat. If nothing better, swimming icebears may be an alternative. So humans will have less problems with them.
Arctic ring seals, that seems to be a favourite food for some icebears, seem especially clever at swimming and crawling up the rivers and into freshwaters where there are less icebears. There are seemingly relict populations of arctic ringseals in lake Ladoga and up to the lake Saimaa system in Finland, that is on the icy side of the large Fennoscandian morraine going that way..
The same is known uphill around the Hudson bay..
The Lake Baikal seal is a close relative to the arctic ring seal, that must have swam and crept all the way up the Jenesej river.
Even the Kaspian seal is related, and must have come down the Voga river during the ice ages.
The brown Ursus arcticus is not so good at sneaking up and cracking ice and take them and also not so good swimmer..
Carbonmontanus: “The Orchas must also have something to eat”
Endangered polar species would certainly be cheered up by the knowledge that their extinction helped to satisfy the appetite of an invasive species. What’s next – seeing rare birds being wiped out on some Pacific island by rats – and saying “rats must also have something to eat” ?
And the thing with orcas is that they often kill NOT because “must have something to eat”
but like people – for the fun of killing – see a killer whales beaching themselves to snatch a seal or a sea lion pup, only to “play” with it by throwing it into the air, recapturing it and throwing it again. Once the pup was dead – they lost their interest, and left its body uneaten.
Dr Piotr
Blame God or Darwin for such manners. I did not create the Orchas.
By the way, rapidly invading species and unbalanced unstable Økosystems also seems to be quite characteristic of our time. Mankind can indeed be blamed for a lot of it and in many ways.
The icebears kill more than they can eat if they have the chanse to . They take the blubber and leave the guts, the filet and the bones further to polar seagulls foxes.and wolves maybe.
Thus able to live allmost without drinkwater also.
Piotr
Another point that may be better.
On Orcas that play with small seal,puppets and then leave them dead without eating.
I suddenly came to think that some owls, the largest, Bubo bubo bubo L, and the fameous Stryx nebulosa lapponica L known in Quebec as “Chat huant” the horror 0f the night…
………actually are killing away competition from other predators. The Bubo is systematically seeking up and killing red fox puppets without eating thus believed to be of advantage to human groose and hare hunting. .
The big stryx nebulosa horror of the night falls like a lump of lead from the great darkness. And lifts off again in 2 seconds grey and noiseless as a featherball, leaving pussy all CAPUT with head cut off by razor- blade..
They kill the pups of Canidae, Felidae, Musteloidae and Procyonidae without eating apparently just murdering for sport.
The orcas here feed mostly on dense ” schools” of young fat herrings and similars. And so they do in Oregon I think. Where seals and sea lions are obvious competition to their food. And will help starfishes and crabs to their food by killing off some seal puppets in ecess .
So God and even Darwin may not have thought it wrong after all, rather Humans again to be blamed, who cannot understand such things. and who are so proud of their tiny brains.
Carbo: Dr Piotr Blame God or Darwin for such manners.
My issue was not with God or Darwin, but with your flippant attitude toward the negative effects of the human alteration of climate to the polar ecosystems,
as something … natural:
“[invasive species] must also have something to eat” .
Would you apply that to dismiss rats decimating rare bird colonies in the Pacific?
Of possible interest, impacts of climate change on polar bear survival rates and policy implications:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/03092023/research-link-between-emissions-polar-bear-decline/
I have a project application with the U.S. Department of Energy to install solar power fencing around wastewater lift stations. Each produces 7,000 kVa a year. There are 2 Million wastewater lift stations in America. Doing just this one action will replace all of the coal power plant production in America.
Why do you want to replace all of the coal power plant production in America when it is these plants that produce most of the electricity used in America today? Coal generated about 19% of the electricity at utility-scale facilities in the United States in 2021, down from 42% in 2014.
Hr. J D. Swallow
Down from 42% to 19% in 7 years, that seems so phaenomenal that we must look out for whether such a rapid change may have other disadvantges that are not yet seen, and not what popular people are discussing politically.
I would not put electricity production in focus and tell other people to look at that, because electricity production seems to have other solutions being rapidly developed.
But show that I am more aware and cunning and point at processes where coal gas and oil hardly can be resigned on such as Ironworks, Burning of lime and concretes, Brickwork and glass fabrication, reduction of aluminium and other ultralight metals and alloys, exotic rinsing and upgrading of scarce resources such as copper silicium and “rare earths”.
And then massive airfreight traffic where alternatives to highly purified kerosene is dubious.
The earth gas industries has really taken off in recent years and it has got its big leaks.
Coal is not so precarious anymore , it has got its good alternatives long ago and has become obsolete both for traffic, chemical industry, and for El.- production..
In everyday life we rather discuss food resources , refinery freight and distribution. Fish and meat and grains fruits and vegetables, global freight even by airplanes and driving long way by cars to the supermarkets, also the enormeous waste and loss of such products.
We had 5 potatoe plants among the flowers this year, and today I shall eat all the smallest potatoes that are allways there among the larger,, traditionally wasted and resigned on, but they are especially good extra in the peasoups and fish soups. and grow quite locally, not to be imported all the way from uphill France. packed in plastic.
And we have picked over all the wild strawberries and blueberries this year. If only a few, they are especially fine for cake decoration.
A handful of Pisum sativa also. That is not very much, but they are also very fine flower decoration at the fences.. And indicators of soil and climate, can allways be shown to, referred to, and discussed at Real Climate worldwide., where they can be claimed to be better than the alternatives..
I need not discuss coalpower plants because that is obsolete allready, on its way out.
Strawberries and wild raspberries mushroms and apples and apple worms are not obsolete , and keeps your higher understandings more bright, updated, and healthy..
Carbomontanus says
1 SEP 2023 AT 12:52 AM
“But show that I am more aware and cunning and point at processes where coal gas and oil hardly can be resigned on such as Ironworks, Burning of lime and concretes, Brickwork and glass fabrication, reduction of aluminium and other ultralight metals and alloys, exotic rinsing and upgrading of scarce resources such as copper silicium and “rare earths”.”
Carbomontanus reply to my fact filled comment does not deal with the fact at China is building new coal fired power houses as fast as they can to keep up with their increasing demand for electricity.
China’s new coal plant approvals surge in 2022, highest since 2015, new research shows
Posted Thu 2 Mar 2023 at 5:22pm
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-03/china-s-new-coal-plant-approvals-surge-in-2022/102048480
China approved equivalent of two new coal plants a week in 2022, report finds By Jessie Yeung, CNN Published 2:57 AM EST, Mon February 27, 2023 https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/energy/china-new-coal-plants-climate-report-intl-hnk/index.html
Carbomontanus needs to elucidate on how, or why, China’s emissions of the trace gas, CO₂, that is essential for all terrestrial life on the Earth, is different from the CO₂ that is emitted in the West from the burning of coal.
Should I answer for the chineese now and then doing obsolete things?
By the way: “The trace gas CO2, that is essencianl for all terrestrial life” is another denialist slogan from Thinktank. That betrays where a lot of people are ordering their central stimulants.
JDS: Why do you want to replace all of the coal power plant production in America when it is these plants that produce most of the electricity used in America today? Coal generated about 19% of the electricity at utility-scale facilities in the United States in 2021…
BPL: 19% is not “most.”
Barton Paul Levenson says
1 SEP 2023 AT 12:14 PM
BPL: 19% is not “most.”
Why is Barton Paul Levenson not able to acknowledged that even if the percentage of energy produced using fossil fuels is 80%, does that not qualify as being a “most”?
“Overall, fossil fuels fell from an 88 percent share in 1988 to 85 percent today, suggesting a floor of 80 percent going into the next years if not decades. According to the BP Energy Outlook, world coal has remained steady at 28 percent of total primary energy usage, while natural gas rose to 23 percent (from 20 percent), a 15 percent gain. Oil’s market share dropped from 40 percent to 34 percent, mostly attributable to lost demand in the industrial/power plant market.”
https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/fossil-fuels-vs-climate-politics-two-graphs/
JDS Sep.1 Why is Barton Paul Levenson not able to acknowledged that even if the percentage of energy produced using fossil fuels is 80%, does that not qualify as being a “most” ?
Because J Doug Swallow is too full of himself to read his own post before patronizingly lecturing others ? Here are his own words in question:
JDS Aug 31: Why do you want to replace all of the coal power plant production in America when it is these plants that produce most of the electricity used in America today? Coal generated about 19% of the electricity
See? “coal”, not: “fossil fuels”. And “Coal generated about 19% of the electricity.
Hence BPL response to YOUR claim:”19% is not “most.”
And instead of admitting your error (claiming “19%” as “most”)- you portray your error as something that discredits …BPL??? I quote:
JDS Sep. 1: “Why is Barton Paul Levenson not able to acknowledged that even if the percentage of energy produced using fossil fuels [sic!] is 80%, does that not qualify as being a “most”“???
JDS: Why do you want to replace all of the coal power plant production in America when it is these plants that produce most of the electricity used in America today
BPL: 19% is not “most.”
Further, it is only 19% of the “utility-scale facilities” power. Which excludes all <1MW sources. Like the solar panels of homes.
Dear JDS,
I suppose that Robert pointed mostly to the circumstance that burning coal produces more greenhouse carbon dioxide per unit of produced electricity than burning other fossil fuels.
Greetings
Tomáš
J Doug Swallow: – “Why do you want to replace all of the coal power plant production in America when it is these plants that produce most of the electricity used in America today?”
Firstly, coal-fired electricity generators in the US do not produce most of the electricity used in America today. Per the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the percentage shares of utility-scale electricity generation by major energy sources in 2022 were:
* Natural gas: _ _ _ _ _ 39.8%
* Coal: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 19.5%
* Nuclear: _ _ _ _ _ _ _18.2%
* Renewables: _ _ _ _ 21.5% – Non-hydro: 15.3% + Hydro: 6.2%
* Petroleum & other: _ 0.9%
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us-generation-capacity-and-sales.php
Secondly, we/humanity need to stop burning carbon ASAP or we likely won’t have many locations on this planet remaining suitable for habitation and a global famine in the coming decades.
The world has just recorded its first exceedance of the +1.5 °C global monthly mean threshold for Jul 2023 (1.54 ± 0.09 °C). Per Berkeley Earth analysis, there’s a 99% chance that the full year-2023 will be the warmest year as a global mean on the instrumental record, and a 20% chance to exceed the +1.5 °C (2.7 °F) global annual mean warming threshold above the preindustrial benchmark.
https://berkeleyearth.org/july-2023-temperature-update/
Scientific analysis by James Hansen and colleagues suggest the Earth System is currently on a warming trajectory for breaching the longer-term (multi-year) +1.5 °C global mean temperature threshold, likely by the end of this decade, and +2.0 °C likely by 2050.
https://twitter.com/DrJamesEHansen/status/1668996655532654593
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf tweeted May 25:
The tweet included a gif animation showing areas of the globe (in purple) that would be considered no longer habitable (MATs ≥ 29 °C) at various global mean surface temperatures, ranging from +1.5 to +4.4 °C warming levels.
https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1661450321766371329
Professor Stefan Rahmstorf then followed with this tweet (twitter translation from German to English):
https://twitter.com/rahmstorf/status/1661680905813893121
A 2021 Chatham House risk assessment concluded that by mid-century global food demand would be up 50 percent, but crop yields down 20 to 30 percent, an equation that would result in global famine and a food cost-of-living crisis making our current problems look like a picnic.
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/09/climate-change-risk-assessment-2021
@ Nigelj
Thankyou for your kind reply and nice understanding of bears.
I have an obvious solution to this..
In Tibet they have 4 ways of getting buried To water, to the fire, to the earth, and to the air, depending..
The presumably buddhistic and qualified Shamans are turning all their prayer wheels to find out, and if to the air, your body is carried our in procession to the heathers. Where a tiny smoke signal has been given for days,for all the gribs to assemble. They are old and experienced and have had it before and have learnt.
The People is shown to stay back a bit, to watch it only from distance, and your body is then hacked into small enough pieces to be thrown to the flock of gribs. (Gulture)
Who then lift off again one after the other very heavy loaded and you are being lifted off and brought around and shit out to all over the Tibetan plateau and heathers,….. that becomes even greener than before.
I would suggest a large meat grinder on Franz Josefs land, and your ability to to bequeat your dead body, (Lat CADAVRE) back to Nature rather to the icebears. Who will like and appreciate you.
by a certain “undertaker” if he can find your body “worthy” of it, That would be a sustainable worlds industry.
To freeze it immediately after undressing and inspection, , X- rayed for metals and artificials and maybe enough fat also,…. and bring it up there for re cycling rather to the icebears.
. Because when we take everyting from them their food and their lands and habitats, then we should also give them something back in order to keep them.
Proper shamanism and buddhism in Tibet has understood this long before western sciences.
And I call upon Hr Levenson from the Presbyterians. , this is not against our holy scriptures and beliefs..
The Sun is currently in a Solar Maximum period and has just started a Grand Solar Minimum period with reduced sunspots, which are linked to hotter areas, which may last 80 years.
NOAA says that the sunspot number will be declining starting in 2025 and going to zero in around a decade and that will reflect a lower solar output leading to global cooling and increased cold weather possibly causing reduced agriculture output and famines. NOAA’s predictions stop at 2015 with the sunspot number at zero.
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/predicted-sunspot-number-and-radio-flux
Ralph Gardner,
Evidently, somebody is feeding you some serious nonsense.
In past years, there has been many words spilled on speculations of a coming Grand Solar Minimum, such a future event predicated on not much more than the low SSN & TSI through Sunspot Cycle 24 (which ended in late 2019) and some fancy curve-fitting. A better understanding of the situation described such doomist predictions as follows:-
And the higher-than-expected solar activity of Sunspot Cycle 25 has put us now into a Grand Solar Speculation Minimum.
The numbers you are looking-at from NOAA-SWPC are the predictions for Sunspot Cycle 25 and the zero values beyond 2035 are because that is when Sunspot Cycle 25 will have ended, therefore beyond the prediction process. Note these predictions are graphed out on a different page of that NOAA-SWPC website and also grafted on to the data that now includes the first quarter of Sunspot Cycle 25.
Today’s view on the question of a coming Grand Solar Minimum? “The basic answer is no.”
I’ve been seeing this assertion about imminent global cooling for a few decades, now. The last solar minimum was supposed to be the start of it, but now we’re warmer than ever. Since that was a spectacular failure, you’re bumping the onset ahead by one solar cycle.
The accumulation of greenhouse gases simply outweighs the smaller effects of the solar cycle.
Even the solar activity forecast is suspect. For example, there is now a lot more solar activity than was forecast for the current cycle. Utilizing your same source:
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
we are already higher than the peak of last cycle, with another year of increase expected. For July 2023, observed sunspot average was 159.1, but the NOAA prediction was 80.6, with a range from 54.2 to 107.3. When you’ve got double your forecast, and far above the top end of your range, you have a poor forecasting system!
Ralph Gardner
A grand solar minimum wont have much effect on anthropogenic global warming, and wont be causing decreased agricultural output or a famine. From NOAA:
“On the whole, these and other studies find consistent results. While the Sun’s influence is detectable in Earth’s temperature records, the global-scale warming influence of human-produced greenhouse gases is likely to be far stronger than even a very strong Grand Solar Minimum.”
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-incoming-sunlight
Ralph Gardner: – “NOAA says that the sunspot number will be declining starting in 2025 and going to zero in around a decade and that will reflect a lower solar output leading to global cooling and increased cold weather possibly causing reduced agriculture output and famines.”
The overwhelming science says the Earth System is on a trajectory of global warming (NOT cooling), even if humanity ceased all human-induced GHG emissions ASAP.
The Nature article published on 14 Jun 2016 by Andrey Ganopolski, Ricarda Winkelmann & Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, titled Critical insolation-CO₂ relation for diagnosing past and future glacial inception, included the following Abstract (bold text my emphasis):
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature18452
Professor H. J. Schellnhuber CBE was the keynote speaker at the 50th Anniversary Summit of the Club of Rome on 17 Oct 2018, shown in the YouTube video titled Keynote Debate Can the Climate Emergency Action Plan lead to Collective Action? (50 Years CoR), duration 2:23:08. Professor Schellnhuber said (bold text my emphasis) from time interval 0:20:56:
“So, some people have speculated the next ice age will be next week. I can tell you: It’s not true! Don’t believe that! [audience chuckles]
It will happen…
I blow it up…
Actually, never again!
That’s why we are in the Anthropocene. Remember, if the blue line is crossing or cutting the black line, from the left, there will be another glacial inception. Now this is a hundred-thousand years into the future, and if you look where, in fifty-thousand years, there would be another ice age, but only if the CO₂ would not be influenced by human intervention. Actually now, the atmospheric content is, according to the orange line, and you see, the lines are not crossing anymore, but we will add another billion, and hundred-billions of tonnes CO₂, where rather we will have to use the brown line, so there will be no ice age anymore. The human impact is so powerful already – that’s why we talk about the Anthropocene – that we have suppressed the Quaternary planetary dynamics already.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK2XLeGmHtE
I think Prof Jason Box is one that provides a plain language description in his YouTube video published 4 Aug 2023 titled 5 factors behind the Global Heatwave 2023, and it’s not just El Niño, duration 0:11:54. He suggests the factors for the current extreme temperatures include:
1. Enhanced GHG effect;
2. Ocean heat content;
3. El Niño;
4. Shipping emissions;
5. TSI increase; and Prof Box also mentions
6. Reduced volcanic aerosol events.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYdvn2pGyOw
To all and everyone
About Ralph Gardner behind his back pointing at him and labeling him, about that grand solar minimum for the next 80 years, smile smile, dispute won, proof stated according to science.
This is my great advantage and my upper hand from above you in the grades and down on you down there in the grades,…………..
…………………that I have visited https://klimarealistene.no in Oslo downtown as often as I could on their monthly tavern meeting up- stairs at https://pelles/pizza.com Oslo downtown at the railway square.
There is hardly anything new to me from climate- surrealistic side after what I have seen and learnt there: They also have their Website and “scientific comittee” that repeats and sustains it all in detail…
Unluckily those tavern meetings seem to have been ended, maybe they were thrown out from that quite urban tavern for not having paid their bill and the beers and pizza, as I allways did. exept for one time as they said that they would pay for me.
So they have retired to Bærum Public Library upstairs that are very tolerant I know, and further to Litteraturens hus, Wergelandsveien aside of Kunstnernes hus. Rather to keep cellar meetings there, where they are especially tolerant…
This has got traditions.
Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig, Goethes Faust 1, and Adolf Hittlers tavern meetings in old München with Beer and Bratwurst und ein Schnapps & eine Zigarre until they got much stronger dopes and did really set off
In Goethes Auerbachs Keller, the Devil Mephisto was given the tools and the remedies for opening the barrels for really to serve from the think- tanks from worldwide. Tokaier, Spätburgunder, Liebfraumich, Bordeaux , Riocha, Valpolicella, you name it…….. until all the thinktanks were empty……
………..and sudden flames came out…….
of all . those devlish drilled, several holes in the one and only one especially big barrel / think- tank from the cellars.
Then all the drunks reallized that something was wrong.
This is quite ingenious from Goethes side. That scene , Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig comes on every theatre performance of Goethes Faust 1. Goethe must have been experienced.
Mephistopheles, the great pioneering populist did also proclaime from the Cateter im Studierzimmer that “Grau, treuer Freund, ist jede Teorie. Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum!”
Or in US American in the Congress on Capitol Hill “…I am no scientist but…… smile smile!”.
So there is hardly anything new on the Cateter and in the Pulpits and Thinktanks from that side.
The seas around the UK are showing a recent increase, about 2020-2023, in mean sea level.
The blue and red lines ,should on average, be coincident on
https://ntslf.org/storm-surges/latest-surge-forecast?port=Newlyn&chrt=3
but Newlyn and all other UK ports have been showing similar vertical displacement of these residual curves, and in their archives of the last couple of years .
It would be convenient to say there is a problem with the Exeter Met Office/NTSLF big-data “surge predictor” of the blue or NTSLF tidecurves underlying the red. But 2 different analyses independent of NTSLF and independent of each other confirm an anomalous MSL change ,well beyond global SLR and local GIA, of about 0.15m in the last 3 years. Also quiet weather periods, ie just inverse barometer, confirm no problem with the blue curve predictions and a meso-period fixed offset for MSL of about 0.15m requiring adding to the red curve .
My hunch is that something has gone wrong with the Atlantic Deep Water part of AMOC slowing down and water “backing up” in the NE Atlantic, any thoughts?
Does such an effect in the NE Atlantic show up in AMOC modelling as an early signature of a change in AMOC?
Nick Cook
Southampton
England
Hr n. cook
No bad idea. Unluckily, no- one who might know better, is answering to it.
But it may indeed be so that a regional change in the deepwater and shallow water saltiness and temperatures may cause changes and jumps of only 0. 15 meters or about 1 1/2 handwidths in UK ports, and thus a signal or parameter to be followed.
It is very steady here in the oslofjord where land uphieving traditionally is about 50 cm per century as can be seen in old harbours that are getting too shallow, but in recent time that rising of fameous rocks and stones has clearly slowed down.
Meanwhile on the other side of the globe..
Atmospheric fluids move away from normal. A disturbed time in the North Atlantic in a southeasterly direction. climate change stuff? exceptions to the rule? Quantum mechanics at the macro level?
Taken from NHC
Northeastern Atlantic (ex-Franklin):
Post-Tropical Cyclone Franklin is located a few hundred miles
north of the Azores, and is forecast to move quickly southeastward
towards warmer waters east of the Azores. This system could acquire
some subtropical or tropical characteristics later this week or
this weekend while it moves erratically between the Azores and
Portugal. For additional information on this system, including gale
warnings, see High Seas Forecasts issued by Meteo France.
* Formation chance through 48 hours…low…near 0 percent.
* Formation chance through 7 days…low…20 percent.
All,
I found this site after watching the very engaging and educational lectures by Stefan on youtube. I am not in any way, shape or form, a climate scientist. I’m a former intelligence analyst. This forum is filled with intelligent debate on the subject of the state of the AMOC. It is also the epitome of the trouble with climate science. A thought experiment if you will?
2 climate scientists encounter a person bleeding to death.
Scientist 1: I’ve calculated x and y where x is the volume of blood loss and y is the amount of time before death is inevitable.
Scientist 2. I’ve calculated all possible variables regards environmental conditions pertaining to blood loss and the likely response of the emergency services if a call is placed now, giving z, the likelihood of survival.
Scientist 1: Fascinating. Let’s review each other’s findings?
Non scientist: “Holy shit! apply pressure and call an ambulance!”
To quote Yoda, “That is why you fail”. For over 50 years, very clever people such as yourselves have failed to fathom the simple truth on climate change. Your competition in this area is common sense. Which isn’t common. You’ve been up against the big oil companies spending trillions on climate denial arguments, which you still haven’t won. Don’t believe me, watch GB News, millions do.
If I was a PR person representing the climate science community, I would say to you simply this. Thank you! You’ve done some amazing research on this subject. Your attention to detail is wonderful and the empirical method has been followed to the letter. What you’ve failed to note properly is that the study and paper by the Ditlevsen’s has issued the starkest warning in years. Rather than debate it, support it. Even if they’re wrong, so what? I used to provide actionable intelligence. That’s exactly what this report is, actionable. Not debateable. ACTIONABLE!
Climate scientists are missing the point. The public is not as bright as you. They are a herd. You don’t debate the location and likely attack vectors of the predator. You just yell “WOLF”.
But what if we get it wrong? Then the actions taken will have averted disaster. Which is a far better outcome than after the fact saying “We told you so”.
By god, I hope I reach someone with this. You’re so damn clever. Wise up.
Simon McGill; – “Climate scientists are missing the point. The public is not as bright as you. They are a herd. You don’t debate the location and likely attack vectors of the predator. You just yell “WOLF”.”
I’d suggest many people won’t believe someone just because they cry “WOLF”, unless they too can be convinced of seeing signs of a presence of the ‘wolf’, and whether it’s a danger to them personally (or to the ones dear to them).
We are talking here about an Earth System entering new ‘territory’ never before experienced in all of the 300,000 years or so of modern human history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_history
I’d suggest Australian billionaire and businessman Dr Andrew Forrest AO is now presenting a compelling case of the ‘wolf’ being already here, and not just at our doorsteps – in increasingly more cases, the ‘wolf’ is already wreaking havoc in millions of people’s homes & businesses. Will enough key people now take notice and act effectively before it’s too late?
Dr Forrest explained his perspective on the practical steps needed to accelerate collaboration, stop global warming and build a green energy economy in the Asia-Pacific, at the Boao Forum for Asia Perth 2023, on Wednesday, 30 Aug 2023.
Dr Forrest said (from time interval 0:01:03):
“I believe actions must now rule.”
Dr Forrest declared in a presentation slide (from time interval 0:03:35):
Dr Forrest said (from time interval 0:05:31):
“Normally, your sweat will cool you down. But if it’s too humid, your sweat can’t evaporate. Your body heat can’t escape. As you sit here, your body is churning through energy, creating heat right now. If you can’t exhaust that heat, you’re going to cook pretty quickly. You’re a thermo-regulated organism. It’s a survival advantage, until global warming. Now, your thermal-regulation is not a survival advantage – it’s a survival disadvantage. If you can’t get rid of that heat because of humidity, you cook yourself. Your core temperature starts to rise – I’m not kidding about any of this. This is proper, referenced science. At just 35 degrees, with high humidity; death within six hours. Deaths have been recorded within fifteen minutes – I’m just… As a scientist, we’ve got to be as safe as possible, so I’m saying, within six hours. But even temperatures as low as 31 degrees can kill.
Lethal humidity is already here – please look at the screen. It is already here, from Australia, to India, to China, to North America. It’s rising. For every degree the planet warms, this rise is 7 percent. Our planet’s risen 1.5 degrees – this has risen 10 percent. You get a cross between eighty and ninety percent [relative humidity] – there are scientists much greater than me in this audience – they’ll tell you, that’s enough to go lethal. It will be the next level pandemic, ladies and gentlemen; we just can’t avoid it. Unless we can put the handbrake on it over the next ten years, it’s going to live with us forever. We do not have the human evolution to survive it. If you’re not near an air-conditioner, which is now your only way of surviving, your evolutionary advantage has stopped.”
Dr Forrest said (from time interval 0:10:17):
“All mammals… So, yes, I really feel it for my children, my grandchildren. I feel a very deep responsibility. But the mammalian world, they too are thermo-regulated, and they are not built for this. The most affected countries: China, India, the United States, where much of the world’s foods come from, so I just want to think that one through, right? So, if we are having trouble living, we’re also having trouble growing food. It’s an even bigger problem for the rest of the world. But also: West Africa, South America, all of Asia, Australia, Central Europe and Middle East, are impacted by this.
What happens next? I can tell you, border walls are not going to help. The Trump wall; see you.”
Dr Forrest said (from time interval 0:12:00):
“I call this: The Stockholm Syndrome of humanity – not of people who’ve been kidnapped, but all of us. We are tied to fossil fuels, and we think we can’t get out of them. Even though they’re killing us, we’re tied to them. We think we can’t survive without them, but we can, and we must! We are – blame me please – the origination of global warming. The industrial world is the origination of global warming. It is completely irrelevant if you want to travel to see your grandmother in Europe, or drive here in a car full of energy, switch on your air-conditioner; that’s your absolute right. It’s my responsibility; it’s our political leaders’ responsibility to ensure that the metals, the energy, that you have every right to consume, are not delivered to you in a form that will kill your children. You have to hold us to account. It’s the biggest greenwash in the world to blame the public – it’s us!”
Forrest concluded with (from time interval 0:23:11):
“Because it’s business – I need you to know – it’s business which is causing global warming. It’s business which will kill your children. It’s business which is responsible for lethal humidity. But it’s policies which guide business. You, must hold us, to account. Don’t let us, with our clever advertising, blame you the consumer, or you the public or individual – that’s rubbish. Business, guided by government, will either destroy, or save this planet.
Hold us to account – the power of you.
Thank you. Make us change. That’s all I’m asking you to do – make us change. Thank you very much.”
See Dr Forrest’s presentation in the YouTube video titled Dr Andrew Forrest AO speaks at the Boao Forum Asia, duration 0:24:10.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kigyFOj7HUw
See the presentation slides at: https://cdn.fortescue.com/docs/default-source/announcements-and-reports/2599801.pdf?sfvrsn=11d660ea_6
Published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on 4 Sep 2023 was an op-ed by David Spratt headlined Betting against worst-case climate scenarios is risky business. It included:
https://thebulletin.org/2023/09/betting-against-worst-case-climate-scenarios-is-risky-business/
People need to ask themselves: Do you feel lucky?
Professor H. J. Schellnhuber CBE claims he coined the phrase at a meeting at the Belgian Academy of Sciences:
“Avoiding the unmanageable and managing the unavoidable.”
See in the video from the time interval 0:47:20 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK2XLeGmHtE
Thanks for the link to Dr Forrest’s lecture. Very educational. Of the replies I’ve had, yours I found to be the most constructive and informative. Thank you for a reasoned response. I wish you luck.
@ all and everyone
Here we have it.
As one religion or corpus here is selling the broken water cycle and advocates spraying freshwater everywhere around to save the situation and the world……
………..a Geoff Miell is selling mortal humidity setting off from Australia to all othyer continents like a wolf that is allready here. And must be conquered.
Carbomontanus: – “………..a Geoff Miell is selling mortal humidity setting off from Australia to all othyer continents like a wolf that is allready here. And must be conquered.”
At risk of receiving a rambling & incoherent response from you:
1. Do you disagree with Dr Andrew Forrest’s presentation? Which parts, or is it everything he said? Why?
2. Do you think “mortal humidity”/lethal humidity isn’t real, and not already happening in Australia and elsewhere?
See my comments earlier at: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2023/07/back-to-basics/#comment-813126
3. Do you think the ‘wolf’ isn’t already here, and not wreaking havoc already for millions of lives & livelihoods?
Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, a professor of theoretical physics specialising in complex systems and nonlinearity, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (1992-2018) and former chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, wrote in the Foreword to What Lies Beneath: The Understatement Of Existential Climate Risk, published Aug 2018, concluded with (on page 3):
https://www.breakthroughonline.org.au/whatliesbeneath
4. Do you think we/humanity should not “conquer” the ‘wolf’, and just bear the consequences; i.e. the collapse of civilisation?
Here we have it again.
We are “rambling”, a borrowed norse word in Engli9sh, verbum å ramle….. =scrambling. making offensive chaotic noise with rubbish and primitive weapons…..
Such arguments are sheere colonial racisms againhst the alians and niggers in the colonies, who have not understood and who cannot obey and submit and obey to system yet, and serve it the way that he expects and orders it..
It is the way that they conquered and settled in Australia, and now teaching that style in terms of wolves to worldwide and asking the remaining “aborgineans” to respond and to clear up and obey, submit, and to relate.
Insinuating that we have not yet understood the dangers water vapour.
They were pardoned by court in masses after they could not relate and behave at home, and shipped to Australia to try and begin a new and better life there.
Most of them could. But some of them could obviously not.
Simon McGill,
Your thought experiment is a tad poor as the job of the climatologist is far removed from his patient. He cannot himself apply pressure although he can shout out “Call an ambulance!!” and indeed has been shouting this for some decades now. But the throng in the queue for the phone box are not concerned that their golden-egg-laying goose is bleeding to death. Half of them reckon to it being a goose not a gander so it’s probably just a time-of-the-month thing. And the other half don’t want to lose their place in the queue, the queue which is trampling the goose and causing the blood-loss.
So in your thought experiment, Simon McGill, where are you?
(You are also badly wrong in suggesting anyone should “watch GB News.” Yes the GB News audience figures do now amount to a few million but the refrain from any sane human should be “Don’t ever watch GB News!!!”)
I concluded humanity was going to struggle dodging the climate-change bullet a couple of decades back. I’m not sure how Ditlevsen & Ditlevsen (2023) is greatly significant in that regard
I am a political animal and could give chapter and verse on the UK’s under-performing mitigation measures. My own MP is a climate-change denier happily sat in a safe Tory seat. I am today going to scribe out some corrections aimed at another Tory MP who is not in denial but still stuck in the Tory party-line. And tomorrow…
Plus I’m no climate scientist.
So Simon McGill, in this unmitigated disaster humanity is creating for itself, where are you?
Thanks for your reply. I like your golden goose analogy, especially the argument on goose vs gander. As to where I am? I’m very much the non scientist applying pressure and calling the ambulance but I’m also cynical that A) the ambulance will arrive in time and B) the patient was saveable.
Personally, based on no scientific basis at all, I’m of the opinion that there’s too much energy in the system already and we’re now locked into the AMOC halt, I think there will be a landslide next year from Greenland’s southern glaciers and the sudden introduction of billions of tons of ice into the north atlantic will stop the AMOC. I really hope I’m wrong.
Btw, I didn’t suggest anyone should actually watch GB News, I was simply stating that millions do and they manage to daily cast doubt on confirmed climate science, which frankly amazes me.
Where am I? I’m along for the ride same as you. Granted, I’m late to the game but my fear is real and my points are valid. Sadly, I’m of the opinion that the time for action has passed. I’ve simply offered my views on why we failed. Again, I would really love to be wrong.
Thank you, Mr. Concern Troll.
Um, no offense but that seems like a rather glib assessment of the situation, and the analogy flawed
I’m not sure where to begin, but your basic argument is a common one that reduces the problem to one of communication. But the alarm has already been raised, repeatedly. That’s why you know about it.
Perhaps the analogy would be if you kept submitting your actionable reports etc. into a black hole. Then what? Correct me if I’m wrong, but consider the case for war (the second) in Iraq. Behind the scenes it was understood that there were no WMD, yet objections were actively buried.
Red lights have been flashing over all sorts of environment problems for decades, and yet here we are.
As you noted, the zone has been flooded with FF centered agitprop. It works because it’s so much easier to be destructive than constructive. It’s an inherently asymmetrical situation. As the man said:
“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
― Mark Twain
The scientists are doing their job. You’ve heard them. Great! Now what are YOU going to do about it? Blame the messengers?
Hi Radge,
Thanks for engaging. The funny thing is that for years, intelligence reports WERE being published into black holes. Seriously, embassies around the world had their automatic printers set up above shredders so that the secret yet unimportant reports would be shredded pretty much seconds after they finished printing. I’m not kidding.
It took an event, something in September 2001 if I recall which made everyone pause and take stock.
What am I going to do about it? My bit, but the point is, it’s just my bit. Capitalism got us here, not me.
The fact that you’ve turned this back on me is kinda the big point you see? The companies that actually got us here get a pass, but little old me who dared to post on a real climate science forum, gets turned on by the crowd…So..thanks for proving my point?
SM: Capitalism got us here, not me.
BPL: I think you’ll find that the USSR and PRC also used (use) fossil fuels. Capitalism isn’t the problem; not accounting for externalities is.
Simon McGill
I turned it back on you because I think your assessment is incorrect and needs to be rethought.
Like I said, I hardly know where to begin. You’ve sort of naively jumped into the middle of decades long discussions on this and related topics and brought with you some questionable assumptions. Not a big deal in and of itself, but I assure you nobody here other than trolls gives the FF industry a pass.
Assume ~ ass u me.
Saying that the crowd “turned on” you also misrepresents the reaction. The crowd disagrees. Be sensitive to the fact that he crowd has been down this road many times before, is well aware of the issues you’ve raised, and knows what it’s talking about.
A good place to start might be RealClimate’s index of posts including but not limited to:
Scientific practice
Climate in the media
Responses to common contrarian arguments
Mitigation of Climate Change
Climate modeling…
Check the posts, read the comments:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/index/
The RealClimate start here page has links to sites that debunk common points of confusion:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/start-here/
You can also google any number of sites, books, and articles dedicated to exploring precisely the issues that concern you and the scientific community.
Personally, I think your initial comment strongly resembles a typical prelude to a prolonged bout of trolling and science bashing. The fact that, right out of the gate, you’ve set yourself up in opposition to everyone here with a lecture and a decided level of hostility (quote: “You’re so damn clever. Wise up.”) is not promising either: Pretty much straightforward bait, in fact.
Sadly, a false analogy, in that the scientists in your example have the capability to apply dressings or torniquets–yeah, I know they’re deprecated these days–not to mention calling 911.
Scientists do not have a comparable ability to apply climate policy. They don’t control legislatures. They can run for office, as Andrew Weaver did:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Weaver
They can advocate, and demonstrate to the point of civil disobedience, as James Hansen has done:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen
They can speak out and educate, as Jason Box, Kevin Anderson, Katherine Hayhoe, and our estimable RC team, as well as so many less-heralded others have done.
But fundamentally it’s politicians, and where democracy functions, voters, who have the ability and the duty to stop the bleeding. And the last group does bear a lot of responsibility–though the majority has long said that they are concerned about climate change, it has clearly not been much of a determinant of voting behavior–though I think that is finally changing somewhat:
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/25/1195566969/climate-change-made-it-in-the-gop-debate-some-young-republicans-say-thats-a-win
Simon McGill
“Climate scientists are missing the point. The public is not as bright as you. They are a herd. You don’t debate the location and likely attack vectors of the predator. You just yell “WOLF”.
If the scientists had just cried ‘wolf’ I suspect the public would immediately demand the location of the likely attack vectors, and in fact full details of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, because 1)we all have some healthy innate scepticism of new science and 2)the mitigation response requires huge lifestyle changes. So we would soon be back at square one with detailed scientific discussions and updates.
Its not the same situation as a manager crying fire in an office tower block and people just run for the exits. People obviously don’t ask for proof and detailed timelines . If its a false alarm nothing much is lost. If the climate problem was to be a false alarm, it will cost us plenty, so people want to see reasonable evidence the problem is real.
And people have certainly been given that evidence that the climate problem is real and severe. The trouble is people don’t want to hear, due to vested interests, psychological barriers, denialist lies, ideological leanings against government regulations, taxes, or other involvement, etcetera. We have a perfect storm of demotivating factors. However with climate change impacts now becoming very obvious this should help counter those demotivating factors.
“We have a perfect storm of demotivating factors. However with climate change impacts now becoming very obvious this should help counter those demotivating factors.”
We can hope but I have my doubts. Here in the UK there is a big fuss over 20 mph limits (in select urban areas) and direct action (i.e. vandalism) protests against ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zones), so despite the evidence showing 20 mph limits result in lower deaths/serious injuries on the roads, clearly people object to lower KSI and cleaner air in cities if it involves restricting their perceived freedom.
Simon, first, if you are looking for direct action, you might do better with a group other than scientists. Scientists study things. It’s the purpose of science. We provide information, and it is ultimately up to the engineers and decision makers to act on that information if they are interested in fact based policy.
You say that it doesn’t matter if a theory is wrong, but to a scientist, all theories are wrong–and to paraphrase George Box, some of them are useful. It is in that context that you have to interpret what climate scientists are telling you. What they are saying is quite unequivocal.
And the problem is not that fossil fuel companies spend trillions–they don’t…unless you are perversely insisting on converting to some failed currency. They spend millions, perhaps tens of millions electing useful idiots to positions of power. The propaganda arm costs even less than that.
The issue is that the problem of climate change cannot be solved unless everyone changes the way he or she lives, and people don’t want to change, even if it means their children must suffer. It would seem that the human will to survive only goes so far…and not very far at that.
“The issue is that the problem of climate change cannot be solved unless everyone changes the way he or she lives, and people don’t want to change, even if it means their children must suffer. It would seem that the human will to survive only goes so far…and not very far at that.”
Humans are very bad at responding to non tangible distant threats especially if it means lowering perceioved or actual quality of life to do so. It is highly flawed cognitive bias which may have worked well in a bygone era when humans lived like other animals but is dreadful for dealing with current problems. It is why claiming that collectively transitioning to a sustainable future on a global scale should be doable on the basis that we have responded collectively to the threat of invasion in WWII is flawed reasoning, the latter was a tangible serious threat to life, the former isn’t for most people. It is the same reason people say they are going to try and improve their health but quickly give up on exercise programs and diets, because exercise and dieting requires effort and giving up luxuries whereas the benefits take some time to become tangible.
The study and paper by the Ditlevsens has issued the starkest warning in years! Act on it! if it’s wrong, the actions taken will have averted disaster — which is a far better outcome than NOT acting.
What to do?
Fact: we USA taxpayers are subsidizing the fossil fuel industry $20,000,000,000 each year. (See Ref.)
Thus, do what Stefan Rahmsdorf said: “There is no point in specifically subsidizing fossil fuel use. It is unjust, because those using most fossil fuels benefit most, rather than the most needy. The huge subsidies that were paid out in 2022 went to huge windfall profits of fossil fuels companies, of a magnitude which alone would go a long way to solve the climate crisis.”
A crucial action is to write our U.S. Congressmen and Senators. Tell them that, by the USA’s huge subsidies to fossil fuels companies, we are subsidizing climate dangers to our economy and our health: wildfires, floods, drought, heat waves; birth defects, asthma, premature deaths; sea rise; tipping points like breakdown of the AMOC. If they want our vote, make it top priority to stop subsidizing fossil fuels.
Reference: https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/sen-whitehouse-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-we-are-subsidizing-the-danger-
Jane C Jackson: – “A crucial action is to write our U.S. Congressmen and Senators. Tell them that, by the USA’s huge subsidies to fossil fuels companies, we are subsidizing climate dangers to our economy and our health: wildfires, floods, drought, heat waves; birth defects, asthma, premature deaths; sea rise; tipping points like breakdown of the AMOC. If they want our vote, make it top priority to stop subsidizing fossil fuels.”
Published at John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations blog on 5 Sep 2023 was a piece by Ian Dunlop headlined Breaking the suicidal impasse, that IMO provided a sobering assessment, began with:
https://johnmenadue.com/breaking-the-suicidal-impasse/
Have you communicated to your parliamentary representatives (at both federal and state/provincial levels), that encouraging and facilitating more fossil fuel projects is now effectively civilisation suicide?
Where are the effective leaders to drive timely change?
It is good that scientists are scientists and not activists (adressing Simon McGill’s comments).
An activists mind would disturb the science by introducing bias and turbulence in the mind, and diminish thinking capabilities, as it needs a calm mind for abstract thinking and science.
The agw-deniers with all their ad-hominem attacs try to label climate scientists as activists all the time (including institutions like IPCC). So the “scream louder!” (or do even more) would only support the deniers, instead of bringing positive results.
If you want to see activists (lobbyists?) camouflaged as “scientists”, pick a random agw-denier (from those organized ones), and you will see the results of a disturbed/biased mind, pretending to do rational research.
They have a goal and are actively pushing their agenda, which is more important for them than doing unbiased research.
I would not like to see climate scientists becoming similar to them, just with a different agenda. This would kill science.
Over the past decade US climatologists and meteorologists have begun to suspect that the nation’s “Tornado Alley” has somewhat inexplicably and somehow significantly had its corridor shifted eastward: where formerly tornados were common in springtime from west- and north-central Texas through Oklahoma into Kansas typically and in the main, the corridor of tornado outbreaks over recent years seems active in the Mississippi River Basin, affecting Louisiana and Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky a bit more commonly.
As a new period of ENSO has commenced in the Pacific, no obvious or compelling signs of an eastward shift in the corridor of Tornado Alley were discernible this year. However, with over six weeks to go in the Atlantic hurricane season, I am struck that so far only two named storms have come ashore on the US mainland, namely Harold and Idalia. Many or most tropical depressions, tropical storms, and hurricanes this year have not crossed the Atlantic Basin east-to-west before some combination of upper-level winds (jet stream patterns?) and ocean dynamics (currents strong or weak?) lead more storms than is perhaps “normal” to veer due north (or northeast) up the Atlantic: Hurricane Lee was the latest to stall off the SE US coast to track north in order to affect eastern New England and Canada’s Atlantic Provinces. Have hurricane track patterns shifted east in their own parallel to any eastward shift in US tornado tracks?
Could the health or distress in the AMOC be (or to what degree) a response to ENSO dynamics and could the condition of AMOC itself be contributing to hurricane tracks? (As I write this, Hurricane Nigel [still graded as a hurricane] churns and spins in the North Atlantic somewhere between Iceland and Ireland.)
The other recent Atlantic notable feature is the initiation point/NHC classification transition point to hurricane is now at much higher latitudes. Mid latitude initiations used to be very rare
The old normal was TS starting out-of-Africa, and ramping up to hurricane status before hitting the Caribbean. New normal has the whole process much more north, like Nigel
The news item below cites a fresh study published in GRL:
https://www.sciencealert.com/confirmed-new-study-shows-the-gulf-stream-is-definitely-weakening
(although some of the data characterizations impel me to continue to wonder about the quality of science journalism in the last quarter of 2023).
And yet another study from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. This time, new study finds that the Gulf Stream is warming and shifting closer to shore !
https://phys.org/news/2023-10-gulf-stream-shifting-closer-shore.html
And here is what seems to be a recent report from the ESA on satellite data revealing the extent of Antarctic ice loss over the past quarter century:
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-1/Antarctic_ice_shelf_demise
As Stefan has put it in at least one of his talks (maybe the Max Planck Inst. address from this past summer): IF we had begun taking the accumulating data seriously as early as the 1990s, we would have found more time to make transitions that later data like those linked above suggest will now have to be undertaken comparatively suddenly and with more immediate disruptions and dislocations that, alas, could have been avoided.
I can’t think that the ESA data suggest that the AMOC’s status is “improving”.