Shattered records show climate change is an emergency today, scientists warn

Shattered records show climate change is an emergency today, scientists warn

Seven climate records set so far in 2016

 

Flooding in Straiton, Scotland, in December. Scientists say it will increase in future. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA

 

by Damian Carrington

 

 

Unprecedented temperature levels mean more heatwaves, flooding, wildfires and hurricanes as experts say global warming is here and affecting us now

May was the 13th month in a row to break temperature records according to figures  that are the latest in 2016’s string of incredible climate records which scientists have described as a bombshell and an emergency.

The series of smashed global records, particularly the extraordinary heat in February and March, has provoked a stunned reaction from climate scientists, who are warning that climate change has reached unprecedented levels and is no longer only a threat for the future.

Alongside the soaring temperatures, other records have tumbled around the world, from vanishing Arctic sea ice to a searing drought in India and the vast bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef. The UK has experienced record flooding that has devastated communities across the country and scientists predict that the flash floods seen by parts of the country in recent days will increase in future.

 

Aftermath of coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef, which has seen an estimated 22% of the reef’s corals die. Photograph: Xl Catlin Seaview Survey/EPA

“The impacts of human-caused climate change are no longer subtle – they are playing out, in real time, before us,” says Prof Michael Mann, at Penn State University in the US. “They serve as a constant reminder now of how critical it is that we engage in the actions necessary to avert ever-more dangerous and potentially irreversible warming of the planet.”

It was just last December when the world’s nations sealed a deal in Paris to defeat global warming but Prof Stefan Rahmstorf, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, says: “These [records] are very worrying signs and I think it shows we are on a crash course with the Paris targets unless we change course very, very fast. I hope people realise that global warming is not something down the road, but it is here now and it affecting us now.”

“What is happening right now is we are catapulting ourselves out of the Holocene, which is the geological epoch that human civilisation has been able to develop in, because of the relatively stable climate,” says Rahmstorf. “It allowed us to invent agriculture, rather than living as nomads. It allowed a big population growth, it allowed the foundation of cities, all of which required a stable climate.”

 

Smoke and flames from the wildfires erupt behind a car on the highway near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. Photograph: Mark Blinch/Reuters

But the spikes in global surface temperatures in recent months have been anything but stable. They did not just break the records, they obliterated them. “The numbers are completely unprecedented,” says Adam Scaife, at the Met Office in the UK. “They really stick out like a sore thumb.”

The scorching temperatures mean 2016 is all but certain to be the hottest year ever recorded, beating the previous hottest year in 2015, which itself beat 2014. This run of three record years is also unprecedented and, without climate change, would be a one in a million chance. Scaife says: “Including this year so far, 16 of the 17 warmest years on record have been since 2000 – it’s a shocking statistic.”

Thermometer records go back to 1880, but ice cores, tree rings and corals show global warming driven by humanity’s burning of fossil fuels and forests has left the planet at its hottest for at least 5,000 years. “If we are not above this [temperature] already, we will be in 10 or 20 years’ time and then you have to go back 120,000 years to find higher temperatures than present,” says Rahmstorf.

Another shattered record is the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which is on course to rise by a record amount this year, leaving the symbolic landmark of 400 parts per million to history. “We know from Antarctic ice cores that go back almost a million years that CO2 was never even remotely as high as this,” says Rahmstorf, and the rate at which humanity is emitting CO2 is the fastest for 66m years.

Fast-rising CO2 levels are almost entirely the reason for the record-busting year. But the natural climate phenomenon called El Niño has played a part. Cyclical changes in ocean temperatures over decades lead to El Niños during which stored heat is released from the oceans, impacting temperatures and weather around the globe.

 

Children look at their sheep affected by the El Nino-related drought at a temporary shelter in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Somaliland region. Photograph: Feisal Omar/Reuters

Scientists agree about a fifth of the temperature rise seen in recent months is due to El Niño. However Scaife says: “I suspect some of the months would have still been records, even without the El Niño”. He points out that 1998 saw an ever bigger El Niño, resulting in a record hot year, but that this has now been far surpassed: “It is not even in the running anymore, falling way down the list.”

El Niño is now waning into to its opposite phase, called La Niña. But that does not allay the scientists’ climate concerns: “The La Niña will not be as cool as the El Niño was warm. We are very, very sure of that,” says Scaife. “It probably means that 2017 will not be a record year, but compared to other La Niña years, it is likely to be much warmer than normal.”

Furthermore, there may be more to the record-breaking series than meets the eye. “There is something more going on than the usual global warming trend and El Niño, because in the past El Niño has led to single years breaking records, but it has not caused several years in a row to break records,” says Rahmstorf.

“There is some unexplained part to this and it is concerning, because we don’t understand it and it is hotter than expected,” he says. “I hope the data coming in the next six months or so will bring us some important clues.”

The heat so far has already had major impacts, including a record temperature of 51C in India amid a serious drought and a record warm autumn in Australia, as well as many in the US. “It is in my view highly unlikely that we would be seeing record drought, like we’re seeing in California, record flooding in Texas, unprecedented wildfires in western North America, and the strongest recorded hurricanes in both the northern and southern hemisphere were it not for the impact of human-caused global warming,” says Mann.

Killer heatwaves are increasing too, which is the clearest impact of global warming, says Rahmstorf: “Our analysis of monthly heat records around the globe shows they now occur five times as often. It is those monthly heat records that are representative of heatwaves that last for weeks on end and they are ones that take the highest death toll.”

 

Indian schoolchildren eat ice cream as the country suffers a severe heatwave. Photograph: Jaipal Singh/EPA

The UK has been affected too, with December breaking temperature and rainfall records.

“Climate change means more intense rainfall and therefore an increased risk of flooding,” says Bob Ward, policy director at the London School of Economics’ Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.

“The government, which got caught out by two record wet winters in the last three, has suddenly woken up to the fact, which is why they have set up the National Flood Resilience Review. It is now something we are all going to have to come to terms with in the UK.”

Ward says seeing the records broken may mean more people make the connection between action on to cut emissions, such as support for green energy, and the impacts of global warming. He says the global climate deal agreed in December shows every government already knows this is a problem that needs urgent action, but that the high temperatures already occurring will increase the emphasis on adapting to extreme weather events in addition to cutting carbon emissions.

“The impacts we’re beginning to see are just the start and we know we are going to be facing a worsening situation for at least the next couple of decades even if we do cut emissions,” Ward says.

“What’s worrying [about the record-breaking 2016] is that we are in unprecedented territory and we don’t really know what the consequences will be,” he says. “There are likely to be plenty of surprises, some of which will be nasty.”

From The Guardian @ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jun/17/shattered-records-climate-change-emergency-today-scientists-warn

   

Top Climate Expert: Crisis is Worse Than We Think & Scientists Are Self-Censoring to Downplay Risk

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Climate Change Goes Past Point Of No Return

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Global carbon dioxide in atmosphere passes milestone level

Global carbon dioxide in atmosphere passes milestone level

Climate warming greenhouse gas reaches 400 parts per million for the first time in human history

by Damian Carrington

Hawaii's Mauna Loa observatory, where record CO2 increases are being documented. Photograph: Richard Vogel/AP

For the first time in human history, the concentration of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm). The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea level was up to 40 metres higher than today.

These conditions are expected to return in time, with devastating consequences for civilisation, unless emissions of CO2 from the burning of coal, gas and oil are rapidly curtailed. But despite increasingly severe warnings from scientists and a major economic recession, global emissions have continued to soar unchecked.

"It is symbolic, a point to pause and think about where we have been and where we are going," said Professor Ralph Keeling, who oversees the measurements on a Hawaian volcano, which were begun by his father in 1958. "It's like turning 50: it's a wake up to what has been building up in front of us all along."

"The passing of this milestone is a significant reminder of the rapid rate at which – and the extent to which – we have increased the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," said Prof Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which serves as science adviser to the world's governments. "At the beginning of industrialisation the concentration of CO2 was just 280ppm. We must hope that the world crossing this milestone will bring about awareness of the scientific reality of climate change and how human society should deal with the challenge."

The world's governments have agreed to keep the rise in global average temperature, which have already risen by over 1C, to 2C, the level beyond which catastrophic warming is thought to become unstoppable. But the International Energy Agency warned in 2012 that on current emissions trends the world will see 6C of warming, a level scientists warn would lead to chaos. With no slowing of emissions seen to date, there is already mounting pressure on the UN summit in Paris in 2015, which is the deadline set to settle a binding international treaty to curb emissions.

Edward Davey, the UK's energy and climate change secretary, said: "This isn't just a symbolic milestone, it's yet another piece of clear scientific evidence of the effect human activity is having on our planet. I've made clear I will not let up on efforts to secure the legally binding deal the world needs by 2015 to avoid the worst effects of climate change."

Two CO2 monitoring stations high on the Hawaiian volcano of Mauna Loa are run by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and provide the global benchmark measurement. Data released on Friday shows the daily average has passed 400ppm for the first time in its half century of recording. The level peaks in May each year as the CO2 released by decaying vegetation is taken up by renewed plant growth in the northern hemisphere, where the bulk of plants grow.

Analysis of fossil air trapped in ancient ice and other data indicate that this level has not been seen on Earth for 3-5 million years, a period called the Pliocene. At that time, global average temperatures were 3 or 4C higher than today's and 8C warmer at the poles. Reef corals suffered a major extinction while forests grew up to the northern edge of the Arctic Ocean, a region which is today bare tundra.

"I think it is likely that all these ecosystem changes could recur," said Richard Norris, a colleague of Keeling's at Scripps. The Earth's climate system takes time to adjust to the increased heat being trapped by high greenhouse levels and it may take hundreds of years for the great ice caps in Antarctica and Greenland to melt to the small size of the Pliocence and sea level far above many of the world's major cities.

But the extreme speed at which CO2 in now rising – perhaps 75 times faster than in pre-industrial time – has never been seen in geological records and some effects of climate change are already being seen, with extreme heatwaves and flooding now more likely. Recent wet and cold summer weather in Europe has been linked to changes in the high level jetstream winds, in turn linked to the rapidly melting sea ice in the Arctic, which shrank to its lowest recorded level in September.

"We are creating a prehistoric climate in which human societies will face huge and potentially catastrophic risks," said Bob Ward, policy director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics. "Only by urgently reducing global emissions will we be able to avoid the full consequences of turning back the climate clock by 3 million years."

"The 400ppm threshold is a sobering milestone and should serve as a wake up call for all of us to support clean energy technology and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, before it's too late for our children and grandchildren," said Tim Lueker, a carbon cycle scientist at Scripps.

Professor Bob Watson, former IPCC chair and UK government chief scientific adviser, said: "Passing 400ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is indeed a landmark and the rate of increase is faster than ever and shows no sign of abating due to a lack of political committment to address the urgent issue of climate change - the world is now most likely committed to an increase in surface temperature of 3C-5C compared to pre-industrial times."

The graph of the rising CO2 at Mauna Loa is known as the Keeling curve, after the late Dave Keeling, the scientist who began the measurements in March 1958. The isolated Hawaiian island is a good location for measurements as it is far from the main sources of CO2, meaning it represents a good global average.

 

  Climate-warming gas in atmosphere passes 400ppm milestone – interactive

From The Guardian @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/10/carbon-dioxide-highest-level-greenhouse-gas

Carbon Dioxide Levels this High Pre-Date Humanity

by Dan Upham

To borrow the title of a 2004 Modest Mouse album, here’s some “good news for people who love bad news”: As Treehugger reported on Monday, Hawaii’s Mauna Loa observatory recently measured carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the air of 398.36 parts per million (ppm). It’s looking likely that soon, for the first time in human existence, CO2 levels will hit 400 ppm. CO2 is one of the main gasses driving global warming, and the last time levels exceeded 400 ppm was roughly 2-3 million years ago.

That’s not just a long time ago. In human terms it’s essentially “all the time” ago. We’ve simply never lived in a world with CO2 concentrations so high. As Environmental Defense Fund land use and climate scientist Jason Funk explained, 2-3 million years ago:

• Australopithecines were struggling to become bipedal

• It would be more than a million years before their descendants would master the control of fire

• There were at least eight glacial periods still to come

• The rise and demise of Neanderthals was still in the future

•  A crafty little species called Homo sapiens had yet to arise and apply the use of fire to fossil fuels, launching us on an uncontrolled planetary climate experiment.

“Basic human systems we take for granted and depend on today, like agriculture and urban civilization, were developed in an entirely different climate regime than the one we're entering,” Funk said. “Our species and those systems may have a lot of difficulty enduring in the new climate regime. That's the magnitude of what we're talking about."

The folks at Mauna Loa have been recording atmospheric CO2 levels since 1958, and as the “Keeling Curve” below shows, we’ve been on a collision course with 400 ppm for some time.

The Keeling Curve gets its name from Charles David Keeling, and it’s maintained today by his son Ralph F. Keeling at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. If you want to be one of the first to know when we cross the 400 ppm threshold, follow the Keeling Curve on Twitter @Keeling_curve. 


From EDF @ http://www.edf.org/blog/2013/05/01/carbon-dioxide-levels-high-pre-date-humanity


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For more information about the effects of atmospheric carbon dioxide see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/co2   
  
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