Next Up: The Droughts, Heat Waves, and Floods from the Last Two Decades’ Surge in CO2 Levels
JR: Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters said in June that, driven by global warming, “It Is Quite Possible That 2010 Was The Most Extreme Weather Year Globally Since 1816.″ In a late December PBS story on the link between 2011′s “mind-boggling” extreme weather and global warming, Masters said it’s like “being on steroids … for the atmosphere.” Now Masters examines “Where is the climate headed?”
by Jeff Masters, cross-posted from the WunderBlog
The year 2011 tied with 1997 as the 11th warmest year since records began in 1880, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center said last week. NASA rated 2011 as the 9th warmest on record. Land temperatures were the 8th warmest on record, and ocean temperatures, the 11th warmest. For the Arctic, which has warmed about twice as much as the rest of the planet, 2011 was the warmest year on record (between 64°N and 90°N latitude.) The year 2011 was also the 2nd wettest year over land on record, as evidenced by some of the unprecedented flooding Earth witnessed. The wettest year over land was the previous year, 2010.
Figure 1. Departure of global temperature from average for 2011. The Arctic was the warmest region, relative to average. Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory.
How much of the warming in recent decades is due to natural causes?
The El Niño/La Niña cycle causes cyclical changes in global temperatures that average out to zero over the course of several decades. La Niña events bring a large amount of cold water to the surface in the equatorial Eastern Pacific, which cools global temperatures by up to 0.2°C. El Niño events have the opposite effect. The year 2011 was the warmest year on record when a La Niña event was present. Global temperatures were 0.12°C (0.2°F) cooler than the record warmest year for the planet (2010), and would very likely have been the warmest on record had an El Niño event been present instead.
Figure 2. Departure from average of annual global temperatures between 1950 – 2011, classified by phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The year 2011 was the warmest year on record when a La Niña event was present. ENSO is a natural episodic fluctuation in sea surface temperature (El Niño/La Niña) and the air pressure of the overlying atmosphere (Southern Oscillation) across the equatorial Pacific Ocean. Over a period of months to a few years, ENSO fluctuates between warmer-than-average ocean surface waters (El Niño) and cooler-than-average ocean surface waters (La Niña) in that region. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center.
[JR: See also It’s “Extremely Likely That at Least 74% of Observed Warming Since 1950″ Was Manmade; It’s Highly Likely All of It Was.]
Correcting for natural causes to find the human contribution
We know that natural episodes of global warming or cooling in the distant past have been caused by changes in sunlight and volcanic dust. So, it is good to remove these natural causes of global temperature change over the past 33 years we have satellite data, to see what the human influence might have been during that time span. The three major surface temperature data sets (NCDC, GISS, and HadCRU) all show global temperatures have warmed by 0.16 – 0.17°C (0.28 – 0.30°F) per decade since satellite measurements began in 1979. The two satellite-based data sets of the lower atmosphere (UAH and RSS) give slightly less warming, about 0.14 – 0.15°C (.25 – .27°F) per decade (keep in mind that satellite measurements of the lower atmosphere temperature are affected much more strongly by volcanic eruptions and the El Niño phenomena than are surface-based measurements taken by weather stations.) A 2011 paper published by Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf, Global temperature evolution 1979 – 2010, took the five major global temperature data sets and adjusted them to remove the influences of natural variations in sunlight, volcanic dust, and the El Niño/La Niña cycle. The researchers found that adjusting for these natural effects did not change the observed trend in global temperatures, which remained between 0.14 – 0.17°C (0.25 – 0.31°F) per decade in all five data sets. The warmest years since 1979 were 2010 and 2009 in all five adjusted data sets. Since the known natural causes of global warming have little to do with the observed increase in global temperatures over the past 33 years, either human activity or some unknown natural source is responsible for the global warming during that time period.
Figure 3. Departure from average of annual global temperatures between 1979 – 2010, adjusted to remove natural variations due to fluctuations in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle, dust from volcanic eruptions, and changes in sunlight. The five most frequently-cited global temperature records are presented: surface temperature estimates by NASA’s GISS, HadCRU from the UK, and NOAA’s NCDC, and satellite-based lower-atmosphere estimates from Remote Sensing Systems, Inc. (RSS) and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH.) Image credit Global temperature evolution 1979- 2010 by Grant Foster and Stefan Rahmstorf, Environ. Res. Lett. 6, 2011, 044022 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/6/4/044022.
Commentary: What do climate scientists think?
Some scientists have proposed that previously unknown natural causes could be responsible for global warming, such as a decrease in cloud-producing galactic cosmic rays. Others have proposed that the climate may be responding to the heat-trapping effects of carbon dioxide by producing more clouds, which reflect away sunlight and offset the added heat-trapping gases. These theories have little support among actively publishing climate scientists. Despite public belief that climate scientists are divided about the human contribution to our changing climate, polling data show high agreement among climate scientists that humans are significantly affecting the climate.
A 2008 poll of actively publishing climate scientists found that 97% said yes to the question, “Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?” In my personal experience interacting with climate scientists, I have found near-universal support for this position. For example, I am confident that all 23 climate scientists and meteorologists whom I am personally acquainted with at the University of Michigan’s Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic, and Space Science would agree that “human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.” It is good that we have scientists skeptical of the prevailing consensus challenging it, though, because that is how scientific progress is made. It may be that one of the scientists making these challenges will turn out to be the next Einstein or Galileo, and overthrow the conventional scientific wisdom on climate change. But Einsteins and Galileos don’t come along very often.
The history of science is littered with tens of thousands of discredited scientific papers that challenged the accepted scientific consensus and lost. If we rely on hopes that the next Einstein or Galileo will successfully overthrow the current scientific consensus on climate change, we are making a high-stakes, low-probability-of-success gamble on the future of civilization. The richest and most powerful corporations in world history, the oil companies, have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to push us to take this gamble, and their efforts have been very successful. Advertising works, particularly when your competition has little money to spend to oppose you.
Where is the climate headed?
The 2007 United Nations-sponsored IPCC report predicted that global temperatures between 2007 and 2030 should rise by an average of 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade. The observed warming over the past 30 years is 15 – 30% below that (but within the range of uncertainty given by the 2007 IPCC climate models.) Most of the increase in global temperatures during the past 30 years occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. The 2000s have seen relatively flat temperatures, despite increasing CO2 emissions by humans. The lower-than-expected warming may be partially due to a sharp decrease in stratospheric water vapor that began after 2000. The missing heat may also be going into the deep ocean waters below about 1,000 feet (300 meters), as part of a decades-long cycle that will bring extra heat to the surface years from now.
Regardless, the laws of physics demand that the huge amount of heat-trapping gases humans are pumping into the atmosphere must be significantly altering the weather and climate, even if we are seeing a lower than predicted warming. As wunderground’s climate change blogger, Dr. Ricky Rood said in a recent post, Changing the Conversation: Extreme Weather and Climate: “Given that greenhouse gases are well-known to hold energy close to the Earth, those who deny a human-caused impact on weather need to pose a viable mechanism of how the Earth can hold in more energy and the weather not be changed. Think about it.”
Our recent unusual weather has made me think about this a lot. The natural weather rhythms I’ve grown to used to during my 30 years as a meteorologist have become significantly disrupted over the past few years. Many of Earth’s major atmospheric circulation patterns have seen significant shifts and unprecedented behavior; new patterns that were unknown have emerged, and extreme weather events were incredibly intense and numerous during 2010 – 2011.
It boggles my mind that in 2011, the U.S. saw 14 – 17 billion-dollar weather disasters, three of which matched or exceeded some of the most iconic and destructive weather events in U.S. history–the “Super” tornado outbreak of 1974, the Dust Bowl summer of 1936, and the great Mississippi River flood of 1927. I appeared on PBS News Hour on December 28 (video here) to argue that watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids–an analogy used in the past by climate scientists Tony Broccoli and Jerry Meehl.
We’re used to seeing the slugger hit the ball out of the park, but not with the frequency he’s hitting them now that he’s on steroids. Moreover, some of the home runs now land way back in the seats where no one has ever been able to hit a home run before. We can’t say that any particular home run would not have occurred without the steroids, but the increase in home runs and the unprecedented ultra-long balls are highly suspicious. Similarly, Earth’s 0.6°C (1°F) warming and 4% increase in global water vapor since 1970 have created an atmosphere on steroids. A warmer atmosphere has more energy to power stronger storms, hotter heat waves, more intense droughts, and heavier flooding rains.
Natural weather patterns could have caused some of the extreme events we witnessed during 2010 – 2011, and these years likely would have been naturally extreme years even without climate change. But it strains the bounds of credulity that all of the extreme weather events–some of them 1-in-1000-year type events–could have occurred without a significant change to the base climate state. Mother Nature is now able to hit the ball out of the park more often, and with much more power, thanks to the extra energy global warming has put into the atmosphere.
Extreme weather years like 2010 and 2011 are very likely to increase in frequency, since there is a delay of several decades between when we put heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere and when the climate fully responds. This is because Earth’s oceans take so long to heat up when extra heat is added to the atmosphere (think about how long it takes it takes for a lake to heat up during summer.) Due to this lag, we are just now experiencing the full effect of CO2 emitted [by] the late 1980s; since CO2 has been increasing by 1 – 3% per year since then, there is a lot more climate change “in the pipeline” we cannot avoid.
We’ve set in motion a dangerous boulder of climate change that is rolling downhill, and it is too late to avoid major damage when it hits full-force several decades from now. However, we can reduce the ultimate severity of the damage with strong and rapid action. A boulder rolling downhill can be deflected in its path more readily early in its course, before it gains too much momentum in its downward rush. For example, the International Energy Agency estimates that every dollar we invest in alternative energy before 2020 will save $4.30 later. There are many talented and dedicated people working very hard to deflect the downhill-rolling boulder of climate change–but they need a lot more help very soon.
– Jeff Masters is co-founder of the Weather Underground. This piece was originally published at the WunderBlog.
Related Climate Progress Posts:
- We’ve only warmed about a degree and a half Fahrenheit in the past century. We are on track to warm five times times that or more this century (see M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F ).
- In 2007, Science (subs. req’d) published research that “predicted a permanent drought by 2050 throughout the Southwest” — levels of aridity comparable to the 1930s Dust Bowl would stretch from Kansas to California.
- In October 2010, a National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) study warned, “The United States and many other heavily populated countries face a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought in coming decades … possibly reaching a scale in some regions by the end of the century that has rarely, if ever, been observed in modern times.”
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Great post, reblogging it. So what are the mandatory steps we take?
Fossil fuel emissions are the strongest contributor to atmospheric radiocarbon trends http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2012/2011JD016533.shtml
Further delay means Ecocide.
Jeff Masters wrote: “We’ve set in motion a dangerous boulder of climate change that is rolling downhill, and it is too late to avoid major damage when it hits full-force several decades from now. However, we can reduce the ultimate severity of the damage with strong and rapid action.”
The “boulder” analogy makes the same point as another analogy.
Suppose you are in a car that is accelerating towards a concrete wall.
If you continue accelerating, you will hit the wall with such force that the car will be destroyed and you will be killed.
It’s too late to stop the car before it hits the wall.
However, you can still hit the brakes and slow down the car, and the more you slow down the car before it hits the wall, the more you can “reduce the ultimate severity of the damage”. If you can slow down the car enough, perhaps it will only be damaged and not destroyed. Perhaps you will only be injured, and not killed. Maybe you will even be able to walk away from the crash unscathed.
However, the situation is quite different if instead of heading towards a wall, the car is accelerating towards a CLIFF.
Because if you can’t stop the car in time, then regardless of whether it is still accelerating or whether it has slowed down, the car — and you — are going over the cliff.
And “the ultimate severity of the damage” is not much affected by how fast the car is going — it is affected by how far you fall when you go over that cliff.
It seems to me that global warming is looking more and more like a “cliff” rather than a “wall”.
And though no one can really “see over the cliff”, it seems there is more and more reason to expect that there’s a very long drop.
Nice analogy!
Yes. Good point.
I really do think our leaders should be declaring states of emergency. Well they aught to try to if they had any sense and courage. We should not be taking the gamble that we are opting for currently at the moment!
Very well put.
Rolling blackouts during a heatwave is all that will get peoples attention. Maybe not that far away.
The warming now being seen is when C02 levels just past 350ppm (1985). This ‘inertia’ means that today C02 approaching 397ppm will begin to be ‘seen’ in the climate by 2036- and it will be brutal.
What lies ahead in the pipeline with 360-380ppm in years past is anyone’s guess.
We need a public discussion now in the mainstream media, about the urgency to tackle the climate crisis.
After the debate with the “experts” is settled, we need a public discussion to address every possible question of the public in regards to climaet change. We need to build up the “courage to change”.
A new NASA study was released today on Earth’s energy budget and solar activity:
Earth’s Energy Budget Remained Out of Balance Despite Unusually Low Solar Activity
Jan. 30, 2012
A new NASA study underscores the fact that greenhouse gases generated by human activity — not changes in solar activity — are the primary force driving global warming.
The study offers an updated calculation of the Earth’s energy imbalance, the difference between the amount of solar energy absorbed by Earth’s surface and the amount returned to space as heat. The researchers’ calculations show that, despite unusually low solar activity between 2005 and 2010, the planet continued to absorb more energy than it returned to space.
James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, led the research. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics published the study last December.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20120130b/
I keep thinking, what do people think Hansen is, chopped liver?
The two explanations Masters offers to explain the “relatively flat temperatures” of the 2000s are, there is less water vapour in the stratosphere, and more heat than previously thought is going into the deep ocean.
Hansen has other ideas.
Hansen’s latest paper was published in Dec 2011. NASA is drawing attention to it now, by publishing a press release dated yesterday http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20120130b/
Hansen says the ARGO data on ocean heat storage is looking pretty good. He’s saying if this data is taken to be accurate, it calls “most” climate models into question, because although the models reproduce the historic global average temperature curve very well, they indicate that the planetary energy imbalance is about 1 degree, whereas the ARGO data mean its at most 0.75 degree.
Hansen is confident enough in the ARGO data he’s saying its time to revise the models.
What’s actually been happening, the NASA press release published yesterday says, is that “most climate models overestimate how readily heat mixes deeply into the ocean and significantly underestimate the cooling effect of… aerosols”.
Hansen published what he thought of people who say there has been a period of “lower than expected warming” in the first decade of this century in a 2010 paper. He used a quote from Susan Solomon to set up what he was going to say. Solomon wrote this: “the trend in global surface temperature has been nearly flat since the late 1990s despite continuing increases in the forcing [due to GHGs]“. Hansen contradicted this by saying: “we conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15 – 0.20 C per decade that began in the late 1970s”.
Hansen calls all this “technical” debate that doesn’t alter what he’s been saying about that it is urgent to limit CO2 and other GHG as rapidly and completely as possible.
But it is a significantly different view of the data. If Hansen is right, the “Faustian bargain” he’s been warning us about is worse than he’s thought. I.e. if developing countries clean up their aerosols to any great extent, the planet will experience much more of a positive forcing as a result, from GHG that is already in the system. His call for accurate measurement of what aerosols are doing carries more weight also.
There has been in the past human race history, cultures wiped out before.
Climate Change Has Helped Bring Down Cultures http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/01/30/climate-change-has-helped-bring-down-cultures/
The chance today is that we have science to assess the risks of our environmental actions. We neeed to tap into what the science has acknowledged as the scientific consensus, and need to act accordingly. Otherwise our civilization will break up and anarchy will rise.
Here is another, more in-depth article from NASA GISS also released today on the subject of Earth’s Energy Imbalance including discussion on aerosols, solar activity, target CO2, etc:
Earth’s Energy Imbalance
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_16/
Just up: NASA James Hansen must be thinking of the Minnesota Senate action today: Cowards in Our Democracies, Part 2 http://ht.ly/1FcqaI
Scientists are finding it difficult to persuade the public of the urgency to reduce fossil fuel CO2 emissions. This is in part because p eople profiting from fossil fuel business – as -usual support disinformation about the science , so that they can expand extraction of fossil fuels despite the evidence that such expansion will push the climate system beyond tipping points, assuring further climate change with impacts that are practically out of humanity’s co ntrol.
Scientists attempt to communicate , but are flummoxed by the ability of the profiteers to
manipulate democracies. The scientific method (objective analysis of all facts) is pitted against the talk -show method (selective citation of anecdotal bits suppor t ing a predetermin ed position) .
And then there is this
Methane makes shale gas a current climate danger http://theconversation.edu.au/methane-makes-shale-gas-a-current-climate-danger-5020
Recent reports from UNEP/WMO and Shindell et al have reiterated the need to control methane and other short-term climate forcers – though more urgently so.
Their findings indicate that critical thresholds will be hit within the next 15 to 35 years. Since carbon dioxide is a long-term climate forcer, controls – even if aggressive global carbon dioxide reductions are initiated now – will have little if any effect for 40 years or more. This may be too late.
And then there is this (time relvance and ozone layer vanishing northern hemipshere!)
…increase in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will warm up the bottom air layers near the ground due to the reflection of part of the thermal radiation by the bottom layer of the atmosphere towards the earth’s surface, but also result in a cooling of the air layers of the stratosphere above, where the ozone layer is located.
After the first discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in the mid-1980s, CFCs were rapidly identified to be the cause and their use was prohibited by the Montreal Protocol of 1987. However, it will take decades until these substances will have been removed completely from the atmosphere. “Future cooling of the stratosphere would enhance and extend the impacts of these substances on the ozone layer,” says Dr. Björn-Martin Sinnhuber.
At low latitudes, methane in the stratosphere breaks down into hydrogen oxides, which attack ozone. D. Shindell, 2002
Water vapor breaks down in the stratosphere, releasing reactive hydrogen oxide molecules that destroy ozone. These molecules also react with chlorine containing gases, converting them into forms that destroy ozone as well. So a wetter stratosphere will have less ozone.
Observations of ozone show a thinning of the Earth’s protective stratospheric ozone layer by about 3 to 8% overall since the 1970s. In the upper stratosphere, ozone depletion has been from 15 to 20%. Again, the model is better able to reproduce these values when increased water vapor is included. This is especially true in the upper stratosphere, where ozone is most sensitive to water. The model indicates that increased water vapor accounts for about 40% of the ozone loss in the upper stratosphere, and about 20% of the overall loss to date.
There are two driving forces behind the change in stratospheric moisture. Increasing emissions of methane are transformed into water in the stratosphere by chemical reactions. This can account for about a third of the observed increase in moisture there. http://climateforce.net/2012/01/24/long-lived-cfcs-methane-nitrous-oxide-uptake-and-the-destruction-of-the-northern-hemisphere-ozone-layer/#more-1329
Master’s proposal of a 25-year timelag due to ocean thermal inertia is at odds with the long held and widely reported figure of 35 to 40 years for that timelag.
Can anyone locate any cogent new research on which his proposal is based ? This matters very much indeed because it is one measure of how long we’ll see additional warming after finally ending anthro-GHG outputs.
I.e., if we somehow manage to end those outputs by 2050, the Masters timelag imposes further warming till 2075 (less net enduring carbon sinks’ effect, but including a doubling of received warming due to the loss of the sulphate parasol).
If the conventional view of a 35 to 40 year timelag holds true, then additional anthro-warming continues until ~2090.
It may be that we are already at or near the point where the diverse interactive feedbacks’ CO2e outputs exceed the natural carbon sinks, after which their growth would be beyond our control merely by ending our emissions. If warming is to continue until 2090, that ‘runaway’ outcome seems inevitable, and thus justifies additional action alongside ending our emissions.
While a saving of ~15 years of AGW seems unlikely to be critical it is certainly relevant, so on what is Masters basing his proposed timelag ?
Regards,
Lewis
I want to know when an ice sheet is going to slide into the sea and raise sea levels by a foot?
I’m old (65) with no kids to feel guilty about, and I want to see conservatives try to dismiss that, or how they blame liberals for a sea level rise conspiracy to profit from coastal land speculation.
A foot by 2050 is the current projection.
Once, while traveling back from going to see my sis and family, I stopped for a rain storm at a very strongly built building in Ocala Fl. My bicycle and I being on their front porch, I had a good view of the western direction. The winds and rains were mostly from the East so there was protection. A whirlwind started up just in their front yard and it traveled a little and then rose up and still traveling went further up into the sky and disappeared into the clouds.
Traveling by bicycle I had gained more experience in feeling the weather and learned to appreciate the occasions when there was a handy porch that shielded me.
That store had unusually strong building of a precast concrete. It was probably the talk of the construction business at the time, and I think I remember rumor of it even as far as Gainesville when it was first being built.
I think that people will notice the extremes necessary for building shelter.
Thanks for this repost, Joe. Dr. Masters is one of my favorite meteorologists, because he doesn’t shy away from discussing the impacts of climate change.
If others are interested, there is currently a petition circulating to encourage the AMS to adopt a stronger stance on climate change given the large number of media weather forecasters who are climate science deniers.
http://forecastthefacts.org/
Yes, it’s time to start battening down the hatches and learn to design with nature, getting our crew, skills and abilities in top shape, and prepare a course for clear sailing by eliminating emissions and environmental devastation; hopefully only decades from now to escape the greatest storm and human trial of all times.
cities dont look like the will be a pleasant place to be.
Yes, we’re rapidly moving into a period where almost anything goes; even though in another sense it’s always been like that.
The supposed common wisdom is that cities can and will lead the battle against climate change — admittedly, I have been one of them — and this is not totally clear as they may not have the agility of disbursed populations able to integrate more closely within natural systems at tremendous efficiencies and low costs as did our ancestors. Disbursed populations might also provide smaller more difficult targets to extreme weather events.
But, cities do have disruptive advantages when manmade environments can be reinvented to adapt and large numbers of people working together can marshal tremendous resources — much like large corporations and big governments – and potentially have an amplifying influence on huge populations. One sees this in pop culture, media, and film where it seems that a motion picture must be released in a major showcase city like New York to achieve high status and give it legs.
The scale of this thing, the change that must come, and the problems to be solved are absolutely intoxicating; moderated and gravely dampened by the terrible suffering which will ultimately happen that we must work against to minimize with full diligence, maximum speed and efficiency . . .
Do read a climate progress post that came after this one
“Climate Action Opponents Are Ensuring the Outcome They Claim to Oppose: Big Government
http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/31/414155/climate-action-big-government/
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Joe, referring to Hansen’s energy imbalance paper, do you think his suggestions for reducing two modeling errors (offsetting, I believe) in the major climate models used by the IPCC would explain the small discrepancy between actual and projected global temp rises so far? Do you think IPCC will incorporate those suggestions in their next assessment report?
I know that regional trends don’t necessarily reflect global ones but I find it interesting that this is exactly what’s happening in my neck of the woods.
I live in Austria, and in the fall we experienced the longest dry spell on record. There was virtually no precipitation from mid/late-October to early December, some stations recorded no rain/snow at all. Furthermore, at least in the mountains it was the warmest late fall on record, too – almost no snow below the glaciated high Alpine regions. Mid-december the situation changed slightly, there was just enough snow for the ski resorts to open for the Christmass season. Finally, after New Year snow began to fall again, and it didn’t stop for many days. Many weather stations that hadn’t seen any precipitation in fall now record the highest snow accumulations ever for the month of January. Villages and ski resorts were cut off due to avalange risk.
It’s hard to deny that weather’s getting more and more erratic. I wonder why. Not.
“…avalanche…”