The oceans are soaking up more heat than estimated: - The time for being lazy and unconcerned is running out

The new study says the oceans have absorbed far more heat than previously thought

 

Researchers say that the world has seriously underestimated the amount of heat soaked up by our oceans over the past 25 years. Their study suggests that the seas have absorbed 60% more than previously thought. They say it means the Earth is more sensitive to fossil fuel emissions than estimated. This could make it much more difficult to keep global warming within safe levels this century.

What have the researchers found?

According to the last major assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world's oceans have taken up over 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases.

But this new study says that every year, for the past 25 years, we have put about 150 times the amount of energy used to generate electricity globally into the seas - 60% more than previous estimates. ...That's a big problem.

Scientists base their predictions about how much the Earth is warming by adding up all the excess heat that is produced by the known amount of greenhouse gases that have been emitted by human activities.

This new calculation shows that far more heat than we thought has been going into oceans. But it also means that far more heat than we thought has been generated by the warming gases we have emitted. Therefore more heat from the same amount of gas means the Earth is more sensitive to CO2.

What are the implications of the finding?

The researchers involved in the study believe the new finding will make it much harder to keep within the temperature rise targets set by governments in the Paris agreement. Recently the IPCC spelled out clearly the benefits to the world of keeping below the lower goal of 1.5C relative to pre-industrial levels.  This new study says that will be very difficult indeed.

"It is a big concern," said lead author Dr Laure Resplandy from Princeton University in New Jersey.

The authors say that sea levels may rise quicker than previously forecast

"If you look at the IPCC 1.5C, there are big challenges ahead to keep those targets, and our study suggests it's even harder because we close the window for those lower pathways."
The report suggests that to prevent temperatures rising above 2C, carbon emissions from human activities must be reduced by 25% more than previously estimated.

What does it mean for the oceans?

As well as potentially making it more difficult to keep warming below 1.5 or even 2C this century, all that extra heat going into the oceans will prompt some significant changes in the waters.
"A warmer ocean will hold less oxygen, and that has implications for marine ecosystems," said Dr Resplandy.
"There is also sea level, if you warm the ocean more you will have more thermal expansion and therefore more sea level rise."

What have these scientists done differently?

Since 2007, scientists have been able to rely on a system of almost 4,000 Argo floats that record temperature and salinity in the oceans around the world.
But prior to this, the methods used to measure the heat in the ocean had many flaws and uncertainties.
Now, researchers have developed what they say is a highly precise method of detecting the temperature of the ocean by measuring the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the air. This allows them to accurately measure ocean temperatures globally, dating back to 1991, when accurate data from a global network of stations became available.
The key element is the fact that as waters get warmer they release more carbon dioxide and oxygen into the air.
"When the ocean warms, the amount of these gases that the ocean is able to hold goes down," said Dr Resplandy.
"So what we measured was the amount lost by the oceans, and then we can calculate how much warming we need to explain that change in gases."

Will the heat ever come back out?

Yes, say the authors, but over a very long time.
"The heat stored in the ocean will eventually come back out if we start cooling the atmosphere by reducing the greenhouse effect," said Dr Resplandy.
"The fact that the ocean holds so much heat that can be transferred back to the atmosphere makes it harder for us to keep the Earth surface temperature below a certain target in the future."

 More heat means less oxygen in the water which could have implications for many species
 

 "The ocean circulation that controls the ocean heat uptake/release operates on time scales of centuries, meaning that ocean heat would be released for the centuries to come."

How have other scientists responded to the findings?

With some concern.
"The authors have a very strong track record and very solid reputation... which lends the story credibility," said Prof Sybren Drijfhout at the UK's National Oceanography Centre in Southampton.
"The updated estimate is indeed worrying in terms of how likely it is that society can meet 1.5 and 2 degree targets as it shifts the lower bound of climate sensitivity upward."
Others say that further work is required.
"The uncertainty in the ocean heat content change estimate is still large, even when using this new independent method, which also has uncertainties," said Thomas Froelicher from the University of Bern, Switzerland.
"The conclusion about a potential higher climate sensitivity and potentially less allowable carbon emission to stay below 2C should stimulate further investigation."
The study has been published in the journal Nature.

Wake up people of Earth!! Our planet is in crisis.

Thanx to the BBC

What !! You still don't believe in 'climate change'!! Ten pictures to help convince you

1/10 A group of emperor penguins face a crack in the sea ice, near McMurdo Station, Antarctica

2/10 Amid a flood in Islampur, Jamalpur, Bangladesh, a woman on a raft searches for somewhere dry to take shelter. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable places in the world to sea level rise, which is expected to make tens of millions of people homeless by 2050.

3/10 Hanna Petursdottir examines a cave inside the Svinafellsjokull glacier in Iceland, which she said had been growing rapidly. Since 2000, the size of glaciers on Iceland has reduced by 12 per cent.

4/10 Floods destroyed eight bridges and ruined crops such as wheat, maize and peas in the Karimabad valley in northern Pakistan, a mountainous region with many glaciers. In many parts of the world, glaciers have been in retreat, creating dangerously large lakes that can cause devastating flooding when the banks break.

5/10 Smoke – filled with the carbon that is driving climate change – drifts across a field in Colombia.

6/10 A river once flowed along the depression in the dry earth of this part of Bangladesh, but it has disappeared amid rising temperatures.

7/10 Sindh province in Pakistan has experienced a grim mix of two consequences of climate change. “Because of climate change either we have floods or not enough water to irrigate our crop and feed our animals,” says the photographer. "Picture clearly indicates that the extreme drought makes wide cracks in clay. "

 

8/10 A shepherd moves his herd as he looks for green pasture near the village of Sirohi in Rajasthan, northern India. The region has been badly affected by heatwaves and drought, making local people nervous about further predicted increases in temperature.

9/10 A factory in China is shrouded by a haze of air pollution. The World Health Organization has warned such pollution, much of which is from the fossil fuels that cause climate change, is a “public health emergency”.

10/10 Water levels in reservoirs, like this one in Gers, France, have been getting perilously low in areas across the world affected by drought, forcing authorities to introduce water restrictions.

ARE YOU BEGINNING TO BELIEVE US??

Trying to grapple with climate change in Alaska

BY NANCY FRESCO ...  CO-ORDINATOR  UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA

Coastal villages are washing into the Bering Sea, trees are sprouting in the tundra and shipping lanes are opening in an ocean that was once locked in ice. In Alaska, climate change isn’t a distant or abstract concern.
As a climate change researcher at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, I see a lot of compelling data – and also hear a lot of compelling stories. Both data and stories are important.
For everyone from the National Park Service to the military, from the oil industry to city managers to traditional hunters, adapting to climate change is the new reality in Alaska.

The Aggie Creek Fire near Fairbanks in 2015

It’s happening – and fast

Almost 12 years ago, we embarked upon a new research effort at our state university. The idea was simple: Meet the needs of those planning for our state’s future by providing information on climate change that was local, relevant and scientifically valid.
First named the Scenarios Network for Alaska Planning (SNAP), we soon had to add the word “Arctic” to our name, because we realized that Canada and other countries from the polar region were as eager for long-term forecasts of climate change trends as Alaska was.
In the Arctic and sub-Arctic, climate change is accelerated and its effects are profound. This is primarily the result of what is known as the “albedo effect”: As we lose reflective ice and snow due to warming, more heat-absorbing dark ground and water are exposed. Thus, local warming gets even more extreme.
Just where climate change effects are extreme, data is often limited. Few weather stations offer long-term reliable histories. Populations are sparse. So we glean information from a variety of sources and combine that with historical data and the accumulated knowledge of people who live on the landscape. All point incontrovertibly to a warming environment.

The ‘drunken forest,’ where trees lean and tilt when the permafrost under them thaws. National Park Service            

Widespread effects

The ways in which this change plays out are as diverse as the people and landscapes of Alaska.
Our state includes not only Arctic tundra underlain by the permanently frozen ground called “permafrost,” but also vast stretches of spruce, birch, aspen, alder and willow trees: the boreal forest. To the west, the windy Aleutian islands stretch out into the Pacific, and to the southeast, Alaska hugs the coast of British Colombia and boasts dense and towering coastal rainforest.
Across the state, hundreds of small communities – primarily Alaska Native villages – are not connected to the road system. Accessible only by air, sea, river or winter trails, these communities maintain traditional subsistence lifestyles based on hunting, fishing and gathering food and other resources.
Meanwhile, the state’s coffers are enriched by money from oil and gas extraction – which are both primary sources of climate change, an irony that has not gone unnoticed by those struggling to craft long-term plans for Alaska.
With 6,640 miles of coastline, Alaska is an ocean-dependent state. Due to loss of sea ice that protects soft soils from seasonal storms, huge stretches of this coastline are washing into the Bering Sea. For communities at risk of erosion, all other concerns pale in comparison. At stake are not only structures and money, but also traditions, a sense of place, and even lives.

Thawing permafrost caused this buckling on the Alaska Highway.  

          

In Shishmaref, an Inupiat village with about 500 residents, homes have slipped off cliff edges and a hunter fell through thin ice. Relocation is costly and a last-ditch option.  On the coast of the Arctic Ocean, walruses, seals and polar bears are no longer finding the ice they need to rest, hunt, mate and breed. The shortening sea ice seasons are also threatening traditional hunting practices.
Even for inland residents, the health of the ocean is crucial, because the salmon caught in Alaska’s rivers fatten in the open ocean. Should climate change render the ocean too acidic due to changing atmospheric carbon, the tiny sea snails on which the salmon feed would be at risk because they may no longer be able to form their shells.

In the interior of the state, forest fires are burning bigger and hotter than in the past. The boreal forest system is dependent on the renewal of young vegetation after a burn. But with hotter, drier spring weather, sparks from dry lightning have torched millions more acres than usual. Neighborhoods have been evacuated, and dense palls of smoke have spread across the state.
Such fires also accelerate the other major inland change: permafrost thaw. On the newly soft, water-saturated ground, roads buckle and foundations fail as once-frozen soils slump and shift. Roads, runways and bridges can sustain costly damage. Here in Fairbanks, tilted and sinking homes are a common sight.
As organic soils thaw, they start to decay, which in turn releases carbon into the atmosphere. These carbon releases, which exacerbate climate change, are particularly potent in the form of methane bubbling from lakes.

Urban problems too

About half the population of Alaska lives in Anchorage. Here, livelihoods tend to be more urban, but recreation often depends on snow – snow that is not showing up.
The Iditarod sled dog race has had to move its starting line and reroute mushers. Tourism businesses are suffering. The city, like many communities around the state, is working on a climate change adaptation plan.
Meanwhile, around the state capital of Juneau and other Southeast Alaska communities, the mountains are losing their snow caps early and gaining them late. Water is flowing downstream out of season, which may impact everything from salmon stocks to hydroelectric power generation. Iconic yellow cedar trees are dying due to lack of protective snow cover on their roots.
Here, as elsewhere in the north, whole ecosystems are changing, putting some migratory birds such as eiders and some small Arctic mammals such as pikas and marmots at risk. Also threatened are lifestyles and livelihoods linked to Alaska’s caribou herds, which may be losing the lichen they need to survive.

The airstrip in Kivalina, an Alaska Native village, is in danger of being wiped out by erosion.

Mitigation, adaptation and change

Although mitigation of climate change via reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions is crucial, even the most optimistic scenarios include substantial shifts in temperature for many decades into the future. While adapting to this change is likely to be costly, failing to adapt will be costlier still.
Recognizing this, Alaska’s communities and land managers are taking action.
For the past year, a statewide plan has been in development. The University of Alaska and the municipality of Anchorage are creating a Climate Action Plan to address issues as diverse as invasive beetles, cultural loss and lack of skiing opportunities. For the village of Newtok, planning meant seeking federal funding for total relocation.

When a glacier at the heart of a National Park is rapidly melting, the thaw itself becomes part of the educational mission of the park. Federal agencies, including the National Park Service, the Department of Defense, the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service are working with my planning group and other partners to incorporate climate change into their visions of the future.

For those who live and work in Alaska, adapting to such profound changes in our state is hard. Failing to do so would likely be catastrophic.

 

EPA STUDY PROVES FRACKING CAN IMPACT DRINKING WATER

A long-awaited study by the EPA finds that fracking has "led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells".

After years of asserting that hydraulic fracturing has never tainted drinking water, the Obama administration issued a long-awaited study of the controversial oil and gas production technique that confirmed "specific instances" when fracking "led to impacts on drinking water resources, including contamination of drinking water wells." The conclusion was central to a nearly 1,000-page draft assessment issued, finally, onThursday by the Environmental Protection Agency to address public concerns about the possible effects of fracking on drinking water.
  In the past, top administration officials such as former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz maintained that there was no evidence fracking had fouled drinking water, despite findings to the contrary by EPA's own scientists in several highly publicized cases. The acknowledgment of instances of fracking-related contamination marks a notable reversal for the administration. "Today EPA confirmed what communities living with fracking have known for years: fracking pollutes drinking water," said Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel. "Now the Trump administration, Congress and state governments should act on that information to protect our drinking water, and stop perpetuating the oil and gas industry's myth that fracking is safe."

EPA officials said the study is not meant to provide a comprehensive tally of water contamination incidents. There is no national database of the number of wells fracked or contamination incidents at oil and gas sites.
For 40 years, Congress and successive administrations have exempted the oil and gas sector from a host of federal pollution rules that would require detailed reporting of its activities. As a result, the report stitches together a piecemeal picture of fracking-related incidents. It relies on several case studies involving a handful of major incidents, such as a well blowout in Killdeer, N.D., that state regulators investigated. It also uses state data for possible contamination events, such as spills of fracking fluid at well pads, which EPA acknowledges provides a limited scope of the problem. "The spills occurred between January 2006 and April 2012 in 11 states and included 151 cases in which fracturing fluids or chemicals spilled on or near a well pad," the study said.

"This is a study of how we can best protect our water resources," said Dr. Thomas A. Burke, EPA's science adviser and deputy assistant administrator of the Office of Research and Development, which conducted the study. As far as fracking goes, Burke said during a press conference, "it's not a question of safe or unsafe." Launched five years ago at the behest of Congress, the water study was supposed to provide critical information about the method's safety "so that the American people can be confident that their drinking water is pure and uncontaminated," said a top EPA official at a 2011 hearing. But the report was delayed repeatedly, largely because the EPA failed to nail down a key component: a baseline, sampling of water before, during and after fracking. Such data would have allowed EPA researchers to gauge whether fracking affects water quality over time, and to provide best industry practices that protect drinking water. EPA had planned to conduct such research, but its efforts were stymied by oil and gas companies' unwillingness to allow EPA scientists to monitor their activities. As a result, the study does not offer enough new data about fracking's effects, said several scientists who research oil and gas development's impact on water.
Rather, the EPA report provides an overview of cases of fracking-related water pollution investigated by state regulators. "It's comprehensive in its treatment of the literature, but it's not very comprehensive in bringing new research or data from the field," said Robert Jackson, professor of environment and energy at Stanford University. "That's my biggest disappointment: They didn't do prospective studies, they didn't do well monitoring, they didn't do much field research. I don't feel like we have a lot of new information here." Despite its conclusion that fracking has not led to water contamination at every fracking site, the report nonetheless catalogues risks to drinking water at every step of the process: from acquiring water to use in stimulating the well and mixing the fracking chemicals with the water to constructing wells, injecting the fracking fluid into the well, and handling of fracking waste water that flows back up the well. The risks are ever present.

Further, the study confirmed problems that independent researchers have identified over the last five years in peer-reviewed scientific literature. The EPA cited the high number of chemical spills on well pads in places such as Colorado, where fracking fluid could leach into the water table. It confirmed the migration of methane into some people's drinking water in Pennsylvania. Moreover, it noted that oil and gas companies, especially in the West, frack in underground sources of drinking water––or formations where pockets of water and hydrocarbons weave through each other.
Industry has denied such types of fracking. But Jackson and his Stanford colleague Dominic DiGiulio presented research at a conference last year that said oil and gas companies are fracking at much shallower depths than widely believed, sometimes through the underground water sites. The issues with fracking contamination will increase with the expected expansion in fracking for oil and gas unless legislation is passed to control abuses and regulate fracking processes.

Why Half a Degree of Global Warming Is a Big Deal

By BRAD PLUMER and NADJA POPOVICH  OCT. 7, 2018
The Earth has already warmed 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 19th century. Now, a major new United Nations report has looked at the consequences of jumping to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius.

Half a degree may not sound like much. But as the report details, even that much warming could expose tens of millions more people worldwide to life-threatening heat waves, water shortages and coastal flooding. Half a degree may mean the difference between a world with coral reefs and Arctic summer sea ice and a world without them.
                                                Arctic

Illustration of globe centered on Arctic with ice melting.
Status of Arctic summer sea ice:
1.5°C  Sea ice will remain during most summers      2°C  Ice-free summers are 10 times more likely
An additional half-degree of warming could mean greater habitat losses for polar bears, whales, seals and sea birds. But warming temperatures could benefit Arctic fisheries.
                                     Extreme heat

llustration of people figures being engulfed by growing heat blob.
World population exposed to severe heat    waves (like one that blanketed southeastern
Europe in 2007) at least once every five years:
1.5°C     About 14%   of world population      2°C    About 37%      of world population
Extreme heat will be much more common worldwide under 2°C of warming compared to 1.5°C, with the tropics experiencing the biggest increase in the number of “highly unusual” hot days.
Water scarcity

Illustration of river flow shrinking.
Increase in urban population    exposed to severe drought:
1.5°C       +350 million      people worldwide       2°C     +411 million    people worldwide
The Mediterranean region is expected to see “particularly strong increases in dryness” in a 2°C world compared to a 1.5°C world.
                                      Plants and animals

Illustration of insects with shrinking area.
Species losing more than half of their range:
1.5°C                                            
6% of insects               8% of plants                4%of vertebrates
2°C
18% of insects             16% of plants              8% of vertebrates
                                                 Coral reefs

Illustration of bleaching coral.

Status of coral reefs worldwide:
1.5°C         “Very frequent mass mortalities”          2°C          Coral reefs “mostly disappear”
                                         Sea level rise

Illustration of ruler, measuring 1.5°C sea-level rise versu 2°C.
Population exposed to flooding from sea
level rise in 2100 (without adaptation):

1.5°C       31 to 69 million      people worldwide      2°C     32 to 80 million       people worldwide
A half a degree of warming could be significant for small island nations, which are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise and other climate change impacts.
Crops

Illustration of wilting corn crop.
Global crop yields are expected to be lower under 2°C of warming compared to 1.5°C, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America.

Small changes, big impacts
The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, compiled by hundreds of scientists from around the world, warns that these dangers are no longer remote or hypothetical.

Nations have delayed curbing their greenhouse gas emissions for so long that warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) is now all but inevitable. At current rates of warming, the world will likely cross the 1.5 degree threshold between 2030 and 2052, well within the lifetime of most adults and children alive today.

And 1.5 degrees is a best-case scenario. Without an extremely rapid, and perhaps unrealistic, global push to zero out fossil fuel emissions and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) or higher this century looks more likely.

Each time the Earth heats up an extra half-degree, the effects aren’t uniform across the planet. Some regions, such as the Arctic, will heat up two to three times faster. The Mediterranean and Middle East regions could see a 9 percent drop in water availability at 1.5 degrees of warming and a 17 percent drop at 2 degrees, according to one major study cited in the report.

“If you’re looking at this one region, which is already water-scarce today and sees a lot of political instability, half a degree makes a really big difference,” said Carl-Friedrich Schleussner, the head of climate science and impacts at Climate Analytics and the lead author of that study. “It’s a good reminder that no one experiences the global average temperature.”

The odds of extreme weather events like severe heat waves or powerful rainstorms also don’t go up uniformly with an extra half-degree. The number of extremely hot days around the world, for example, tends to rise exponentially as the global average temperature increases, the report said.

The risk of tipping points
The report also highlights the possibility that even modest amounts of warming may push both human societies and natural ecosystems past certain thresholds where sudden and calamitous changes can occur.

Take coral reefs, which provide food and coastal protection for half a billion people worldwide. Before the 1970s, it was virtually unheard-of for ocean temperatures to get so warm that swaths of corals would bleach and die off. But as global average temperatures have risen half a degree in that span, these bleaching events have become a regular phenomenon.

With an additional half-degree of warming above today’s levels, the report said, tropical coral reefs will face “very frequent mass mortalities,” though some corals may adapt if given enough time. But at 2 degrees of total warming, coral reefs are in danger of vanishing entirely.

It is less certain when other long-feared tipping points will occur, such as the irreversible disintegration of the vast ice sheets on top of Greenland or West Antarctica. But the report warns that these ice sheets could potentially start to destabilize with 1.5 to 2 degrees of warming, committing the world to many more feet of sea level rise for centuries to come.

The report also warns that vulnerable areas, like many African countries and small island nations, may struggle to cope with multiple impacts. Crop failures, heat waves and the expansion of malaria-carrying mosquitoes compound when they occur together.

“You’re not just adapting to one thing at a time, you’re adapting to everything shifting at once,” said Kristie L. Ebi, a professor of public health at the University of Washington and one of the lead authors of the report’s chapter on climate impacts.

Beyond 1.5 degrees
At the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris in 2015, countries promised to hold total global warming to well below 2 degrees and agreed to “pursue efforts” to limit warming to 1.5 degrees. Leaders of small island nations, like the Marshall Islands and Maldives, had deemed that lower goal essential to their survival.

At this point, however, both goals are starting to look wildly out of reach. If you add up all the national pledges made in Paris to curb emissions, they would put the world on track to warm around 3 degrees Celsius or more.

Holding warming to 1.5 degrees, the report said, would entail a staggering transformation of the global energy system beyond what world leaders are contemplating today. Global greenhouse emissions would need to fall in half in just 12 years and zero out by 2050. To stay below 2 degrees, emissions have to decline to zero by around 2075. Virtually all of the coal plants and gasoline-burning vehicles on the planet would need to be quickly replaced with zero-carbon alternatives.

In addition, the report said, the world would have to swiftly develop and deploy technology to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year — using technology that is still untested at large scales.

“My view is that 2 degrees is aspirational and 1.5 degrees is ridiculously aspirational” said Gary Yohe, an environmental economist at Wesleyan University. “They are good targets to aim for, but we need to face the fact that we might not hit them and start thinking more seriously about what a 2.5 degree or 3 degree world might look like.”

Thanx Brad Plumer ---Nadja Popovich

Knight Jonny C

Did global warming 'supercharge' Hurricane Michael?

Doyle Rice  
Hurricane Michael exploded in intensity this week, from a rather nondescript tropical depression Sunday with winds of 35 mph to a Category 4 monster Wednesday with 155 winds.

When it hit land, it became the most powerful hurricane on record to slam Florida's Panhandle and the third-strongest U.S. landfall of all time.

Along with other weather factors, Michael's rapid intensification was fueled in part by unusually warm sea water in the Gulf of Mexico. Warm water of at least 80 degrees fuels hurricanes, and the water in the eastern Gulf this week was as much as 4 to 5 degrees warmer than normal.

Although random weather patterns certainly played a role, the warm waters in the Gulf have a “human fingerprint” of climate change, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate and hurricane expert Jim Kossin.

Hurricane Michael slammed into the Florida Panhandle on Wednesday as a Category 4 storm, killing several people and causing devastating damage. Now a tropical storm, Michael has swept through Georgia and is headed for the Atlantic Coast but is expected to remain dangerous through Friday. 

(Pictured) A family sits by a lantern outside their antique shop during the power outage in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael on Oct. 11 in Panama City, Fla.

Penn State University climatologist Michael Mann told ThinkProgress that "once again we see a storm undergoing extreme rapid intensification over unusually warm ocean waters. We saw this pattern last year with Harvey and earlier this year with Florence and now, with my namesake, Michael.”

Weather.us meteorologist Ryan Maue said "there's no doubt the ocean water encountered by Michael was quite warm compared to the last three decades, especially near the coast."

Maue analyzed early October water temperatures in the eastern Gulf and found that when comparing data from 1985-2005 to data from 2006-2018, the average temperature rose nearly 1 degree.

He said the cause of the rise is still a research puzzle and that "more detailed climate analysis is needed to better understand what has happened over the past 12 years across the Gulf of Mexico."  

Several recent scientific studies say that hurricanes are intensifying more rapidly than they used to. One study this year in Geophysical Research Letters said that since 1986, the rate of intensification of storms like Michael has increased by about 13 mph. 

A 2015 study on how ocean temperatures affect hurricane intensity in the North Atlantic found intensification increases by 16 percent for every 1.8 degree increase in average sea-surface temperatures, ThinkProgress reported.

Regardless of the cause, “Michael saw our worst fears realized, of rapid intensification just before landfall on a part of a coastline that has never experienced a Category 4 hurricane,” University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian McNoldy said.
Thanx Doyle Rice

Crusader Jenny , Nanook & Knight Mika
This is only the beginning--------------------

Hurricane Michael Showing no Mercy

 



Could you stop eating beef to save the earth???

 

If you’re not going to give up all of the meat, scientists say, you at the very least should consider cutting down on your beef consumption.

Researchers at Bard College, the Weizmann Institute of Science and Yale University calculated the environmental footprint of animal products in the U.S. food production system, from the resources needed to produce the feed that goes into their bodies to the emissions produced by the manure that comes out. Beef, they concluded, is worse for the planet than all of the other meats. Way worse. According to the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the amount of greenhouse gases released by beef production is five times that of poultry, pork, eggs and dairy averaged together. It also requires 28 times more land, 11 times more water and six times more nitrogen fertilizer.

The researchers are framing their findings as an attainable way to green up our diets: while meat, in general, is much harder on the climate than grains and vegetables, convincing people to go vegan or vegetarian may be less doable than getting them to cut down on the worst offenders. And that would be the burgers. “Really, there’s no question about it,” Gidon Eshel, a research professor at the Bard Center for Environmental Policy and the study’s lead author, told the Huffington Post. ”Reduce beef whenever possible.”

“The biggest intervention people could make towards reducing their carbon footprints would not be to abandon cars, but to eat significantly less red meat,” concurred Tim Benton, a scientist at the University of Leeds, in an interview with the Guardian. Benton referred to another study, out last week, that showed how beef is wasting calories that could be better allocated to people suffering from hunger. The researchers behind that one reached the same conclusion: Cutting down on steaks and burgers — or eliminating them from our diets completely — has the potential to make a significant impact on  carbon production.
So put that hamburger down!

Stephen Hawking's 7 predictions of Earth's Demise in the next 200 years

Knight Man

From London to Shanghai, world's sinking cities face devastating floods

 

The threat to major population centers is increasing as planners fail to prepare for impacts of global warming, report says

 

Flood victims in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2011. Like many other major cities across the globe, Bangkok is sinking – which puts it at increasing danger from sea level rises. Photograph: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

London, Jakarta, Shanghai and Houston and other global cities that are already sinking will become increasingly vulnerable to storms and flooding as a result of global warming, campaigners have warned ahead of a landmark new report on climate science.The threat to cities from sea level rises is increasing because city planners are failing to prepare, the charity Christian Aid said in the report. Some big cities are already subsiding – the ground beneath Shanghai, for instance, is being pressed down by the sheer weight of the buildings above – and rising sea levels resulting from global warming will make the effects worse.

The cities named in the report are sinking for a variety of reasons. Jakarta is thought to be subsiding by 25cm a year largely because of groundwater extraction, and Houston is sinking as the oil wells beneath it are depleted. Bangkok’s skyscrapers are weighing it down, while London is slowly sinking for geological reasons: Scotland is slowly rebounding and rising after having been weighed down by glaciers during the last ice age, which is, in turn, pushing southern England downwards just like a  see-saw.The warning comes as the world’s leading climate scientists meet this week in South Korea to finalize a comprehensive study setting out whether and how the world can avoid temperature rises of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the body of scientists convened by the UN, has been asked to examine the consequences of such a rise and assess what progress can be made to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

The world has already warmed by roughly 1C from pre-industrial levels, and sea levels could rise by 40cm if that increases to 1.5C, previous science from the IPCC has suggested. Sharp brakes on greenhouse gas production are expected to be needed to halt the rise.
Under the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, governments pledged to hold warming to no more than 2C, with an aspiration not to surpass 1.5C, based on previous IPCC advice. The new IPCC report, to be published on Monday, is expected to show that remaining within the 1.5C limit is still possible but only with strong action to reduce carbon in the atmosphere.                          

Christian Aid, one of many organizations publishing studies to coincide with the IPCC’s judgment, looked at the consequences of a 1.5C rise for a selection of eight major cities around the world. The report concludes that poor development choices are exacerbating cities’ vulnerability to weather shocks. They should plan city development around preparing for future flooding.
Kat Kramer of Christian Aid, who wrote the report, said: “These global metropolises may look strong and stable, but it is a mirage. As sea levels rise, they are increasingly under threat and under water.”
Dozens of the world’s biggest cities are built in coastal areas and near major rivers, making them vulnerable not just to sea level rises but also to storm surges, which can send high seas inland and past maritime defenses.
 The UK and the Netherlands experienced such a storm in 1953, when high tides and a storm surge inundated coastal regions. If similar weather were to strike today, the damage could be much greater despite sea defences, because of rising sea levels and the increased severity of storms that is likely to result from climate change. It is a fact most of the largest cities in the world are close to the sea or great rivers for ease of shipping commerce and trade with other countries. Also for fishing industries, tourist industries and many more industries dependent on water. Now we know that sea walls are not adequate to hold back the angry oceans and eventually our biggest cities will be gone like Atlantis unless our engineers put their knowledge to work to protect them.

Scientists link climate change to extreme weather this summer

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New Climate Study Warns of Dangerous 'Hothouse Earth' Scenario

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