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Nenana Ice Classic: Update

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Somewhat randomly, my thoughts turned to the Nenana Ice Classic this evening, only to find that the ice break up had only just occurred (3:48 pm Alaskan Standard Time, April 25). This is quite early (the 7th earliest date, regardless of details associated with the vernal equinox or leap year issues), though perhaps unsurprising after the warm Alaskan winter this year (8th warmest on record). This is in strong contrast to the very late break up last year.



Break up dates accounting for leap years and variations in the vernal equinox.

As mentioned in my recent post, the Nenana break up date is a good indicator of Alaskan regional temperatures and despite last year’s late anomaly, the trends are very much towards a earlier spring. This is also true for trends in temperatures and ice break up mostly everywhere else too, despite individual years (like 2013/2014) being anomalously cold (for instance in the Great Lakes region). As we’ve often stressed, it is the trends that are important for judging climate change, not the individual years. Nonetheless, odds on dates as early as this years have more than doubled over the last century.

Impacts of Climate Change – Part 2 of the new IPCC Report has been approved

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The second part of the new IPCC Report has been approved – as usual after lengthy debates – by government delegations in Yokohama (Japan) and is now public. Perhaps the biggest news is this: the situation is no less serious than it was at the time of the previous report 2007. Nonetheless there is progress in many areas, such as a better understanding of observed impacts worldwide and of the specific situation of many developing countries. There is also a new assessment of “smart” options for adaptation to climate change. The report clearly shows that adaptation is an option only if efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are strengthened substantially. Without mitigation, the impacts of climate change will be devastating.

cramer

 

 

Guest post by Wolfgang Cramer

 

 

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IPCC WG2 report now out

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Instead of speculations based on partial drafts and attempts to spin the coverage ahead of time, you can now download the final report of the IPCC WG2: “Climate Change 2014:Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability” directly. The Summary for Policy Makers is here, while the whole report is also downloadable by chapter. Notably there are FAQ for the whole report and for each chapter that give a relatively easy way in to the details. Note too that these are the un-copyedited final versions, and minor edits, corrections and coherent figures will be forthcoming in the final published versions. (For reference, the WG1 report was released in Sept 2013, but only in final published form in Jan 2014). Feel free to link to interesting takes on the report in the comments.

The Nenana Ice Classic and climate

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I am always interested in non-traditional data sets that can shed some light on climate changes. Ones that I’ve discussed previously are the frequency of closing of the Thames Barrier and the number of vineyards in England. With the exceptional warmth in Alaska last month (which of course was coupled with colder temperatures elsewhere), I was reminded of another one, the Nenana Ice Classic.
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A new European report on climate extremes is out

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A new report on extreme climate events in Europe is just published: ‘Extreme Weather Events in Europe: preparing for climate change adaptation‘. It was launched in Oslo on October 24th by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and the report is now available online.

Front cover of 'Extreme Weather Events in Europe: preparing for climate change adaptation'
Front cover of ‘Extreme Weather Events in Europe:
preparing for climate change adaptation’

What’s new? The new report provides information that is more specific to Europe than the SREX report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and incorporate phenomena that have not been widely covered.

It provides some compelling information drawn from the insurance industry, and indeed, a representative from Munich Re participated in writing this report. There is also material on convective storms, hail, lightening, and cold snaps, and the report provides a background on extreme value statistics, risk analysis, impacts, and adaptation.

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The new IPCC climate report

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Translations: (Português)

The time has come: the new IPCC report is here! After several years of work by over 800 scientists from around the world, and after days of extensive discussion at the IPCC plenary meeting in Stockholm, the Summary for Policymakers was formally adopted at 5 o’clock this morning. Congratulations to all the colleagues who were there and worked night shifts. The full text of the report will be available online beginning of next week. Realclimate summarizes the key findings and shows the most interesting graphs.

Update 29 Sept: Full (un-copyedited) report available here.

Global warming

It is now considered even more certain (> 95%) that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. Natural internal variability and natural external forcings (eg the sun) have contributed virtually nothing to the warming since 1950 – the share of these factors was narrowed down by IPCC to ± 0.1 degrees. The measured temperature evolution is shown in the following graph.

Figure 1 The measured global temperature curve from several data sets. Top: annual values. ​​Bottom: averaged values ​​over a decade.
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The answer is blowing in the wind: The warming went into the deep end

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There has been an unusual surge of interest in the climate sensitivity based on the last decade’s worth of temperature measurements, and a lengthy story in the Economist tries to argue that the climate sensitivity may be lower than previously estimated. I think its conclusion is somewhat misguided because it missed some important pieces of information (also see skepticalscience’s take on this story here).

The ocean heat content and the global mean sea level height have marched on.

While the Economist referred to some unpublished work, it missed a new paper by Balmaseda et al. (2013) which provides a more in-depth insight. Balmaseda et al suggest that the recent years may not have much effect on the climate sensitivity after all, and according to their analysis, it is the winds blowing over the oceans that may be responsible for the ‘slow-down’ presented in the Economist.

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References

  1. M.A. Balmaseda, K.E. Trenberth, and E. Källén, "Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content", Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 40, pp. 1754-1759, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/grl.50382

Ice hockey

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Eric Steig

It is well known that ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula have collapsed on several occasions in the last couple of decades, that ice shelves in West Antarctica are thinning rapidly, and that the large outlet glaciers that drain the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS) are accelerating. The rapid drainage of the WAIS into the ocean is a major contributor to sea level rise (around 10% of the total, at the moment).

All of these observations match the response, predicted in the late 1970s by glaciologist John Mercer, of the Antarctic to anthropogenic global warming. As such, they are frequently taken as harbingers of greater future sea level rise to come. Are they?

Two papers published this week in Nature Geoscience provide new information that helps to address this question. One of the studies (led by me) says “probably”, while another (Abram et al.) gives a more definitive “yes”. [Read more…] about Ice hockey