Patrick Michaels and the Competitive Enterprise Institute lie and slander real scientists again!

Santer, Jones, and Schneider respond to CEI’s phony attack on the temperature record

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress blog, October 15, 2009

When we last left the Competitive Enterprise Institute, they were going ape for the Scopes climate trial that the Chamber of Commerce had proposed for the EPA.  The deniers just stick their fingers and their ears and scream whenever they hear any science-based finding that GHGs harm human health.  What else can you expect from a group that which actually runs ad campaigns aimed at destroying the climate for centuries?
Now CEI is trying to go after the UK temperature record because the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, used by the Hadley/Met Office, has abandoned some bad data.  Climate Science Watch (CSW) has the background, “CEI global warming denialists try another gambit seeking to derail EPA endangerment finding.“  Ironically, as Prof. Phil Jones, CRU’s Director explains below:

Almost all the data we have in the CRU archive is exactly the same as in the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) archive used by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center [see here and here].  The original raw data are not “lost.”

A small amount of data, which could be easily reconstructed if one wanted to waste a lot of time, was abandoned for reasons such as the following:

Station series for sites that in the 1980s we deemed then to be affected by either urban biases or by numerous site moves, that were either not correctable or not worth doing as there were other series in the region.

Yes, for years the deniers have been claiming that the temperature record is corrupted by the urban heat island effect or bad locations.  In fact, we know that it isn’t (see Must-read NOAA paper smacks down the deniers: Q: “Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years?” A: “None at all.”)  But when CRU actually tries to abandon such data, the deniers cry foul.
CEI:  Can’t live with them, future generations could live with out them.
To compound the irony, the only meaningful hole in the Hadley data is the “hole in the Arctic,” as RealClimate puts it (see here).  The Hadley record simply excludes the part of the world “just where recent warming has been greatest.”  Because of that gap, the Hadley data almost certainly underestimates recent warming.
CSW asked three prominent scientists to comment on CEI’s bogus data-shredding charge and posted them here and here.  I’m reprinting them below, starting with Stanford’s Stephen Schneider, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and author of Science as a Contact Sport: Inside the Battle to Save Earth’s Climate, coming out next month:

Pat Michaels and the Competitive Enterprise Institute continue to obfuscate well-established scientific conclusions by counting on most non-specialists to be unaware of the vast preponderance of multiple lines of evidence for anthropogenic climate warming. Their technique is to raise minor objections that don’t remotely refute the preponderance, and use this scientific trivia to claim that until all points of debate are resolved the mainstream case isn’t “proven.”
This was the tried and true tactic of the tobacco industry for 35 years. Now that industry suffers losses of billions of dollars in lawsuits for hiding the truth and obscuring it with minutiae that most people are not technically trained enough to recognize for the deceptions embedded in what seems to be serious scientific debate.
Why should they not do it given their ideology? They support the ideology of few controls on entrepreneurial activity and thus want to weaken government regulation. In the case of climate change they do this by falsely claiming they have found a new “smoking gun” of refutation of well-established science. Science of complex systems is never finished.  That is why we have assessments like those of the IPCC—to assess where the preponderances are.
What Michaels and the CEI are selling comes from the north end of a south bound horse.

Here’s Benjamin Santer, Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, winner of the Department of Energy Distinguished Scientist Fellowship, the E.O. Lawrence Award, and the “Genius Award” by the MacArthur Foundation:

As I see it, there are two key issues here.
First, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and Pat Michaels are arguing that Phil Jones and colleagues at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU) willfully, intentionally, and suspiciously “destroyed” some of the raw surface temperature data used in the construction of the gridded surface temperature datasets.
Second, the CEI and Pat Michaels contend that the CRU surface temperature datasets provided the sole basis for IPCC “discernible human influence” conclusions.
Both of these arguments are incorrect. First, there was no intentional destruction of the primary source data. I am sure that, over 20 years ago, the CRU could not have foreseen that the raw station data might be the subject of legal proceedings by the CEI and Pat Michaels. Raw data were NOT secretly destroyed to avoid efforts by other scientists to replicate the CRU and Hadley Centre-based estimates of global-scale changes in near-surface temperature. In fact, a key point here is that other groups—primarily at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), but also in Russia—WERE able to replicate the major findings of the CRU and UK Hadley Centre groups. The NCDC and GISS groups performed this replication completely independently. They made different choices in the complex process of choosing input data, adjusting raw station data for known inhomogeneities (such as urbanization effects, changes in instrumentation, site location, and observation time), and gridding procedures. NCDC and GISS-based estimates of global surface temperature changes are in good accord with the HadCRUT data results.
The second argument—that “discernible human influence” findings are like a house of cards, resting solely on one observational dataset—is also invalid. The IPCC Third Assessment Report (TAR) considers MULTIPLE observational estimates of global-scale near-surface temperature changes. It does not rely on HadCRUT data alone—as is immediately obvious from Figure 2.1b of the TAR, which shows CRU, NCDC, and GISS global-mean temperature changes.
As pointed out in numerous scientific assessments (e.g., the IPCC TAR and Fourth Assessment Reports, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Report 1.1 (Temperature trends in the lower atmosphere: Steps for understanding and reconciling differences), and the state of knowledge report, Global Climate Change Impacts on the United States, rigorous statistical fingerprint studies have now been performed with a whole range of climate variables—and not with surface temperature only. Examples include variables like ocean heat content, atmospheric water vapor, surface specific humidity, continental river runoff, sea-level pressure patterns, stratospheric and tropospheric temperature, tropopause height, zonal-mean precipitation over land, and Arctic sea-ice extent. The bottom-line message from this body of work is that natural causes alone CANNOT plausibly explain the climate changes we have actually observed. The climate system is telling us an internally- and physically-consistent story. The integrity and reliability of this story does NOT rest on a single observational dataset, as Michaels and the CEI incorrectly claim.
I have known Phil for most of my scientific career. He is the antithesis of the secretive, “data destroying” character the CEI and Michaels are trying to portray to the outside world. Phil and Tom Wigley have devoted significant portions of their scientific careers to the construction of the land surface temperature component of the HadCRUT dataset. They have conducted this research in a very open and transparent manner—examining sensitivities to different gridding algorithms, different ways of adjusting for urbanization effects, use of various subsets of data, different ways of dealing with changes in spatial coverage over time, etc. They have thoroughly and comprehensively documented all of their dataset construction choices. They have done a tremendous service to the scientific community—and to the planet—by making gridded surface temperature datasets available for scientific research. They deserve medals—not the kind of deliberately misleading treatment they are receiving from Pat Michaels and the CEI.

Finaly, here’s Jones:

No one, it seems, cares to read what we put up on the CRU web page. These people just make up motives for what we might or might not have done.
Almost all the data we have in the CRU archive is exactly the same as in the Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) archive used by the NOAA National Climatic Data Center [see here and here].
The original raw data are not “lost.”  I could reconstruct what we had from U.S. Department of Energy reports we published in the mid-1980s. I would start with the GHCN data. I know that the effort would be a complete waste of time, though. I may get around to it some time. The documentation of what we’ve done is all in the literature.
If we have “lost” any data it is the following:

1. Station series for sites that in the 1980s we deemed then to be affected by either urban biases or by numerous site moves, that were either not correctable or not worth doing as there were other series in the region.

2. The original data for sites for which we made appropriate adjustments in the temperature data in the 1980s. We still have our adjusted data, of course, and these along with all other sites that didn’t need adjusting.

3. Since the 1980s as colleagues and National Meteorological Services (NMSs) have produced adjusted series for regions and or countries, then we replaced the data we had with the better series.

In the papers, I’ve always said that homogeneity adjustments are best produced by NMSs. A good example of this is the work by Lucie Vincent in Canada. Here we just replaced what data we had for the 200+ sites she sorted out.
The CRUTEM3 data for land look much like the GHCN and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies data for the same domains.
Apart from a figure in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) showing this, there is also this paper from Geophysical Research Letters in 2005 by Russ Vose et al. Figure 2 is similar to the AR4 plot.
I think if it hadn’t been this issue, the Competitive Enterprise Institute would have dreamt up something else!

As CSW Rick Piltz said last week

You do not need to reopen the IPCC reports and the technical support document on the EPA endangerment finding because of something having to do with the raw data from the temperature record from East Anglia University in the 1980s.

No amount of data will ever satisfy the deniers.  They’ll plug their ears and shout until the planet is reduced to Hell and High Water.  The only question is how long the media and politicians will keep listening to their shrieks.

NOAA's NCDC Global Climate Report for September 2009

State of the Climate Global Analysis September 2009

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

National Climatic Data Center

Global Highlights

• The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2009 was 0.62 °C (1.12 °F) above the 20^th century average of 15.0 °C (59.0 °F). This was the second warmest September on record, behind 2005, and the 33^rd consecutive September with a global temperature above the 20^th Century average. The last below-average September occurred in 1976.
• The global land surface temperature for September 2009 was 0.97 °C (1.75 °F) above the 20^th Century average of 12.0 °C (53.6 °F), and ranked as the second warmest September on record, also behind 2005.
• The worldwide ocean temperature tied with 2004 as the fifth warmest September on record, 0.50 °C (0.90 °F) above the 20^th Century average of 16.2 °C (61.1 °F). Warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures were widespread, particularly in lower latitudes. The near-Antarctic southern ocean and the Gulf of Alaska featured notable cooler-than-average temperatures.
• For the year to date, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 14.7 °C (58.5 °F) was the 6th warmest, January-through-September period on record. This value is 0.55 °C (0.99 °F) above the 20^th century average.
• A weak El Niño persisted across the equatorial Pacific Ocean during September. Sea surface temperature observations in the equatorial Pacific Ocean during the month remained above average. According to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, El Niño is expected to strengthen and last through the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2009-2010.

Dear Readers,

There is so much information in this report that I can't post it all here, so please look at this link:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=global&year=2009&month=9&submitted=Get+Report

Joseph Romm: NOAA -- Second hottest September on record and virtual tie for hottest in lower troposphere from satellite data

NOAA: Second hottest September on record and virtual tie for hottest in lower troposphere from satellite data

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress blog, October 16, 2009

NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center has issued its latest monthly, “State of the Climate: Global Analysis,” which found:

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2009 was 0.62 °C (1.12 °F) above the 20^th century average of 15.0 °C (59.0 °F). This was the second warmest September on record, behind 2005, and the 33^rd consecutive September with a global temperature above the 20^th Century average. The last below-average September occurred in 1976.

Significantly, September was only 0.04 °C (0.07 °F) off the 2005 record.

This near-record September comes fast on the heels of the second warmest August on record and warmest June-July-August for the oceans.  I previously noted that NASA reported hottest June to September on record.

What is most interesting about this report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is the temperature report from the lower troposphere (“the lowest 8 km (5 miles) of the atmosphere”) — the satellite data that began in 1979 analyzed by the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and Remote Sensing Systems (RSS).

UAH and RSS say September was also the second warmest in their records — a mere 0.01 °C off the 1998 record.  NOAA reports that the lower troposphere warming trend for September is

• +0.13 °C/decade (UAH)
• +0.18 °C/decade (UAH

So yes, the satellite data also shows that the lower atmosphere is warming, contrary to what you may have heard.

In fact, the mid-troposphere (about 2-6 miles above the Earth, which includes a portion of the lower stratosphere) is also warming, according to both UAH and RSS.  It’s not warming quite as fast because as the lower troposphere in part “because the stratosphere has cooled due to increasing greenhouse gases in the troposphere and losses of ozone in the stratosphere.”

The global temperature anomaly for the month looked like this:

Although the United States as a whole was “1.0 °F above the 20^th century average,” with record-tying temperatures in California, as usual the deniers had a few seemingly cool places in the country on which to feast.

We are still seeing staggering warming in some of the worst places from the perspective of the planet as a whole, the land of the the permafrost permamelt, which currently contains contains more carbon than the atmosphere (see here).

Again, what makes these record temps especially impressive is that we’re only in a weak El Niño, and we’re at “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” according to NASA.

Stay tuned.  The heat is on — or, rather, it’s never been off.

Link:  http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/16/noaa-second-hottest-september-on-record-and-virtual-tie-for-hottest-in-lower-troposphere-from-satellite-data/

No easy way out: Scientists look seriously at the possibility of warming beyond the 2 °C target

Nature Reports Climate Change, 15 October 2009; doi: 10.1038/climate.2009.106

No easy way out

Scientists look seriously at the possibility of warming beyond the 2 °C target. Anna Barnett reports.

Warming of 4 °C would cause large declines in rainfall in Africa, Australia, the Mediterranean and Central America, according to climate modellers.© ISTOCKPHOTO / CPURSER

Concerned by escalating greenhouse gas emissions, scientists are now looking in earnest at the possibility of global temperatures rising by 4 °C or more. Gathering this month at the University of Oxford, they sketched out a world affected by severe climate change, which they now see as increasingly probable.

The conference, which took place 28–30 September, marks a shift in experts' hopes of keeping average global temperatures to 2 °C above pre-industrial levels — widely considered the threshold for 'dangerous climate change'. "Emissions have not gone down globally, as people had hoped they would do," says Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK, who spoke at the conference. "The rate of increase has actually gone up."

Recent greenhouse gas emissions match the trajectory for most extreme scenario used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But this scenario, A1FI, has received little study compared with its more moderate counterparts, says Richard Betts of the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre in Exeter, who presented new research in Oxford. "Now we know that emissions are at the upper end of what the IPCC projected a decade ago, it justifies taking the higher-emissions scenario more seriously," he notes. Diana Liverman, director of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford, says that until now, "it was almost like the 2 °C target was driving the science."

Rapid rise

But without swift and steep curbs on emissions, temperatures could rise as much as 4 °C by 2060, according to Betts' new study.

The study predicts that oceans would warm less than the 4 °C average and land areas more — 7 °C in many areas, says Betts. Temperatures could climb by up to 10 °C in western and southern Africa and by the same or more in the Arctic. Decreases in rainfall of at least 20% would be widespread in parts of Africa, Australia, the Mediterranean and Central America.

Added to escalating emissions, he says, is accumulating evidence that rising temperatures will weaken natural carbon sinks, speeding the rate of warming. So far, sinks have absorbed 50 per cent of the greenhouse gases produced from the burning of fossil fuels. Depending on how much sinks weaken — a key source of uncertainty — average global temperatures could reach 4 °C above pre-industrial levels by the 2070s. With weaker sinks, this could occur as early as 2060.

Peak practice

A separate study presented by Nigel Arnell, director of the Walker Institute for Climate System Research at the University of Reading, looked at the impacts of temperatures rising 4 °C by 2080. This scenario would expose 1 billion people to higher water stress and would intensify flood risks for half those living in flood-prone areas. Agricultural lands would shift markedly, with yields of certain crops such as soybeans plummeting. As much as 15 per cent of today's cultivatable land would turn barren, but an extra 20% would be added as cold areas warmed up, found the study. The Amazon rainforest could die back significantly, while pines and firs replace northern grasses.

To avoid temperatures rising to this extent, global emissions will have to peak within about 30 years, says Betts. And to stay within 2 °C, they'll have to peak within a decade. According to papers published in Nature this year^{1, 2}, the later emissions peak, the more precipitously they'll have to fall afterwards to avoid dangerous warming. Even if ambitious action is agreed at this year's UN climate conference in Copenhagen, notes Betts, it is likely to take years to implement.

Opposite approaches

If business as usual continues, extreme climate change could occur soon enough to affect a host of decisions being made today. Infrastructure and forestry plans in preparation now are meant to last for decades or more, and experts on adapting to climate change say these plans may need to be much bolder.

"As you can't rule out a more severe scenario, potentially you have to invest in more expensive, proactive adaptation," says Mark Stafford-Smith, director of the Climate Adaptation Flagship at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in Crace, Australia. In some cases, such as with forest management, he says, planners will need to hedge against a wide range of possible climatic futures by simultaneously pursuing multiple adaptation strategies and later abandoning those that don't work. "You can't just do incremental adaptation and then gradually shift to transformative thinking," he says. Instead, these opposite approaches need to be combined — for example, by protecting trees from wildfires in some areas so that they could survive slight warming, but allowing blazes elsewhere, potentially clearing the way for a very different ecosystem to arise in a 4 °C world.

"You can't just do incremental adaptation and then gradually shift to transformative thinking."

Mark Stafford-Smith

Tailoring all adaptation to deal with the impacts of 4 °C warming would be expensive. For sea level rise alone, protecting global coastlines could cost at least US$25 billion per year, and up to $215 billion if current best guesses are surpassed, according to new figures presented at the Oxford conference. UN experts have previously estimated costs of $49–171 billion a year for all adaptation³.

Policymakers are left between a rock and a hard place, concludes Anderson. "Mitigating for 2 °C is much more challenging than was previously thought, but adapting to 4 °C is also extremely challenging," he says. "There is no easy way out."

1. Meinshausen, M. et al. Nature 458, 1158–1162 (2009). | Article
2. Allen, M. et al. Nature 458, 1163–1166 (2009). | Article | PubMed | ChemPort |
3. Investment and Financial Flows to Address Climate Change (UNFCCC, 2007); http://bit.ly/3Dugp1

Anna Barnett is assistant editor and copy editor at Nature Reports Climate Change

Link:  http://www.nature.com/climate/2009/0911/full/climate.2009.106.html

Arctic has potential to alter Earth's climate: Arctic land and seas account for up to 25% of world's carbon sink

ScienceDaily, October 15, 2009 — In a new study in the journal Ecological Monographs, ecologists estimate that Arctic lands and oceans are responsible for up to 25% of the global net sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Under current predictions of global warming, this Arctic sink could be diminished or reversed, potentially accelerating predicted rates of climate change.

In their review paper, David McGuire of the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and his colleagues show that the Arctic has been a carbon sink since the end of the last Ice Age, which over time has accounted for between zero and 25%, or up to about 800 million metric tons, of the global carbon sink. On average, says McGuire, the Arctic accounts for 10-15% of the Earth's carbon sink. But the rapid rate of climate change in the Arctic – about twice that of lower latitudes – could eliminate the sink and possibly make the Arctic a source of carbon dioxide.

Carbon generally enters the oceans and land masses of the Arctic from the atmosphere and largely accumulates in permafrost, the frozen layer of soil underneath the land's surface. Unlike active soils, permafrost does not decompose its carbon; thus, the carbon becomes trapped in the frozen soil. Cold conditions at the surface have also slowed the rate of organic matter decomposition, McGuire says, allowing Arctic carbon accumulation to exceed its release.

But recent warming trends could change this balance. Warmer temperatures can accelerate the rate of surface decomposition, releasing more carbon into the atmosphere. More concerning, says McGuire, is that the permafrost has begun to thaw, exposing previously frozen soil to decomposition and erosion. These changes could reverse the historical role of the Arctic as a sink for carbon.

"In the short term, warming temperatures could expose more Arctic carbon to decomposition," says McGuire. "And with permafrost melting, there will be more available carbon to decompose."

On the scale of a few decades, the thawing permafrost could also result in a more waterlogged Arctic, says McGuire, a situation that could encourage the activity of methane-producing organisms. Currently, the Arctic is a substantial source of methane to the atmosphere: as much as 50 million metric tons of methane is released per year, in comparison to the 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide the Arctic sequesters yearly. But methane is a very potent greenhouse gas – about 23 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide on a 100-year time scale. If the release of Arctic methane accelerates, global warming could increase at much faster rates.

"We don't understand methane very well, and its releases to the atmosphere are more episodic than the exchanges of carbon dioxide with the atmosphere," says McGuire. "It's important to pay attention to methane dynamics because of methane's substantial potential to accelerate global warming."

But uncertainties still abound about the response of the Arctic system to climate change. For example, the authors write, global warming may produce longer growing seasons that promote plant photosynthesis, which removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; however, increasingly dry conditions may might counteract and overcome this effect. Similarly, dry conditions can lead to increased fire prevalence, releasing even more carbon.

McGuire contends that only specific regional studies can determine which areas are likely to experience changes in response to climate change.

"If the response of the arctic carbon cycle to climate change results in substantial net releases of greenhouse gases, this could compromise mitigation efforts that we have in mind for controlling the carbon cycle," he says.
This study was sponsored by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, the Climate in the Cryosphere Program, and the International Arctic Science Committee.

Link:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/10/091014144729.htm

J. Wayne Leonard, Entergy CEO, is a national hero! "We are cheating our children out of their future -- with our eyes wide open!"

J. Wayne Leonard, Entergy CEO, is a national hero!  We are cheating our children out of their future -- with our eyes wide open!

Joseph Romm: Entergy CEO: “We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man’s activities. We’re virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad.”

Entergy CEO: “We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man’s activities. We’re virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad.”

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress blog, October 15, 2009
 
Last week I reported on the White House Clean Energy Economy Forum — see “Carol Browner says clean energy bill without carbon cap would be a ‘big mistake’; Nobelist Chu agrees, warning we otherwise face catastrophe, with St. Louis above 90 °F for 1/3 the year.”  In this repost, Wonk Room has a video and transcript of some key remarks.

Last week, over a hundred CEOs of American companies broke with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to lobby Congress to “pass comprehensive climate change and energy policy legislation this year.” The U.S. Senate is now considering the Kerry-Boxer Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, which would set a market-based limit on global warming pollution. Participants in a Clean Energy Economy Forum at the White House included J. Wayne Leonard, the Chairman and CEO of Entergy Corporation, the utility giant based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Speaking at the White House event, Leonard called for action on climate change and clean energy not just for economic reasons but starkly moral ones:

We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man’s activities. We’re virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad. There’s no good things that’s going to come of this. But what’s uncertain is exactly which one of those things are going to occur and in what time frame. In the probability distribution curve is about a 50% probability that about half of all species will become extinct or be subject to extinction over this period of time. What we will never know on an ex ante basis is whether or not man be one of those casualties or not.

We condemn Wall Street for taking risks with our economy — risks that all of you are trying very hard to reverse — but at the same time we’re taking exactly the same kind of risks, with no upside whatsoever, with regard to our climate, failing to practice even the basic risk management techniques in terms of climate change reduction.

In a powerful speech, Leonard called a national system to cap carbon pollution “an investment that by all facts, figures and analysis pays back many times over,” and warned that “history will judge us if we don’t pass comprehensive climate and energy reform now” for “cheating [our children] out of their future.”

Entergy serves “two-and-a-half million customers in the mid-South and the Gulf South portion of the country, some of the poorest people in the country,” Leonard noted. These customers already suffered the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which global warming likely fueled.

Although Entergy’s website warns that the “ramifications of global climate change, while uncertain, paint a devastating portrait of an unsustainable world” and that what “the United States does now is critical to eliminating or at least reducing the possibility of catastrophic outcomes for future generations,” the corporation is a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is spending millions of dollars to fight the regulation of climate pollution. Entergy plans to remain in the climate-denial organization in an attempt to “convince other members to agree to emissions limits.”

Transcript:

LEONARD: Good morning. We are a broad base of businesses across America. We represent some 37 states. We touch all aspects of the economy. And we have come together this morning unified in one particular request. And that is that we pass comprehensive climate change and energy policy legislation this year. We are prepared as business to invest, to innovate, to transform the energy sector of this country and of the world — the way we source energy, the way we deliver energy, the way we use energy.

We want to get America back in the business of exporting technology instead of dollars. In order to do that, we need comprehensive legislation. We need to know what the rules are going to be with regard to energy and with regard to climate, and particularly with what the price on carbon is going to be in the United States, if we’re to move around the world and export technology to other countries. And we need legislation in order to do that.

I’m the CEO of Entergy. We have nuclear plants around the country. We also serve two-and-a-half million customers in the mid-South and the Gulf South portion of the country, some of the poorest people in the country. People that have been through Katrina, Gustav, Ike, Rita. You name it, they’ve been through it. Nobody should ever have to suffer through a Katrina.
Last night, I was talking to Secretary Salazar. And he asked me, “What happens to New Orleans when sea level rise is not an inch from thermal expansion but meters, due to land ice melt in west Antarctica and Greenland?”

I said, “Well, we have a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen, but we do have some protections, because we’re working on New Orleans. What we haven’t given enough thought to is what happens to everybody else.”

What happens to all the coastal cities. What happens to the East Coast of the US with the slightly tilt of the planet on its axis as we melt those ice caps. There’s no protection for them. And we’re not talking about hurricanes any more, we’re talking about potentially tsunami-type of events like we’ve seen in Asia, like we’ve seen most recently in American Samoa. A completely different set of events than what we’re used to.

Some people say we can’t do this because of the cost.

As business, we all look at in terms of it’s an investment. In this case it’s an investment that by all facts, figures and analysis pays back many times over. It pays back with reduced adaptation costs in the future, reduced repair and damage from these type of events, and growth in the economy through transferring technology around the world and creating jobs at home.
Some people say we can’t do this because there are some things that are uncertain.

But that is in large part precisely the reason that we need to act, because of the uncertainty, not necessarily because of the things that we do know. We do know a lot, as you all know.
We are virtually certain that climate change is occurring, and occurring because of man’s activities.

We’re virtually certain the probability distribution curve is all bad. There’s no good things that’s going to come of this. But what’s uncertain is exactly which one of those things are going to occur and in what time frame. In the probability distribution curve is about a 50% probability that about half of all species will become extinct or be subject to extinction over this period of time. What we will never know on an ex ante basis is whether or not man be one of those casualties or not.

We condemn Wall Street for taking risks with our economy — risks that all of you are trying very hard to reverse — but at the same time we’re taking exactly the same kind of risks, with no upside whatsoever, with regard to our climate, failing to practice even the basic risk management techniques in terms of climate change reduction.

We talk a lot about in this issue about “us” and “we.” Just so all you know this is not about us. It’s about our children. It’s about our children’s children. When our children are born, we know at that moment in time, that there isn’t anything in the world that we wouldn’t do for them. And as they grow, we know for certain that we would give up our lives for our children. For some reason we won’t do this. We’re cheating them out of their future, and we’re doing it with our eyes wide open. And that’s exactly how history will judge us if we don’t pass comprehensive climate and energy reform now.

Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Link:  http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/15/entergy-ceo-leonard-global-warming/

Andy Reisinger: Polar ice keeps melting – at a faster and faster rate

Polar ice keeps melting – at a faster and faster rate

by Andy Reisinger, degrees of change blog, October 12, 2009

A key rea­son for con­cern about cli­mate change is that it could lead to grad­ual melt­ing of the polar ice sheets in Green­land and Antarc­tica, result­ing in an inex­orable rise in global sea lev­els. A new set of high-precision mea­sure­ments (paper in press with the jour­nal ‘Geo­phys­i­cal Research Let­ters’) now con­firms that the ice sheets are not only melt­ing but that their melt rate has more than dou­bled over the past seven years. This sug­gests that sea lev­els could rise a lot faster than indi­cated in ear­lier stud­ies. Increases in sea level by more than 1m dur­ing the 21^st cen­tury now have to be seri­ously considered.

Numer­ous stud­ies since the early 2000s indi­cated that sev­eral glac­i­ers that drain the polar ice sheets into the ocean have accel­er­ated as a result of local warm­ing. These obser­va­tions trig­gered con­cerns that the polar ice sheets could loose ice more quickly and sea level could rise more rapidly than cli­mate mod­els had sug­gested. But it was unclear how rep­re­sen­ta­tive these rather strik­ing changes were – was it just a tem­po­rary rip­ple run­ning through some glac­i­ers or were the entire ice sheets loos­ing ice at an increas­ing rate?

High-precision mea­sure­ments of the change in the total mass of the polar ice sheets, using a pair of orbit­ing satel­lites (the Grav­ity Recov­ery and Cli­mate Exper­i­ment), have now revealed that both ice sheets are indeed loos­ing mass, and at an accel­er­at­ing pace. The satel­lite data cap­ture the changes in total ice mass and hence give a truly com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of changes in the polar ice sheets rather than only spot mea­sure­ments for par­tic­u­lar glaciers.

The assess­ment by the Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Panel on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) pub­lished in 2007 found that over the period 1993 to 2003, Green­land and Antarc­tica had both lost about 75 bil­lion tonnes of ice every year. If this loss of ice con­tin­ued at that rate for a cen­tury, this would result in sea level rise of 4.2cm. The new satel­lite data now reveal that by 2002/2003, the Green­land ice sheet was already loos­ing as much as 137 bil­lion tonnes of ice per year, and that this rate more than dou­bled again to 286 bil­lion tonnes of ice per year dur­ing 2007–2009. Mean­while, Antarctica’s ice loss had increased from 75 to 104 bil­lion tonnes per year dur­ing 2002–2006, and more than dou­bled to 246 bil­lion tonnes per year by 2006–2009. These most recent rates of ice loss would raise global sea lev­els by 15cm if they con­tin­ued at cur­rent rates over a century.

The trou­ble is of course that there is lit­tle rea­son to assume that the loss of ice will con­tinue only at cur­rent rates while the atmos­phere and oceans con­tinue to warm. It would be extremely sur­pris­ing if the observed melt­ing processes did not increase fur­ther, imply­ing a sig­nif­i­cant risk that sea lev­els would increase by more – and poten­tially a lot more – than the 0.6m that the IPCC had pro­jected for the 21st century.

Unfor­tu­nately, we still do not suf­fi­ciently under­stand all the processes that take place within and under­neath the polar glac­i­ers to under­stand which aspects of warm­ing are respon­si­ble for this accel­er­a­tion. Can­di­dates for the accel­er­ated ice loss include warm­ing of the atmos­phere, increases in local ocean tem­per­a­tures, and the cre­ation of melt­wa­ter on top of the ice sheet that is drain­ing into its base and acts as lubri­cant for the glac­ier flow. Until those processes are bet­ter under­stood, extrap­o­la­tions of the recent trends have to be treated with caution.

How­ever, these recent data are con­sis­tent with a raft of other obser­va­tions and model stud­ies that sug­gest that we now have to seri­ously con­sider that sea lev­els could rise by more than 1m dur­ing the 21^st cen­tury as a result of cli­mate change. A report ear­lier this year by Pro­fes­sor Will Stef­fen at ANU for the Aus­tralian Depart­ment of Cli­mate Change advised that sea level rise could lie some­where between 0.5 m and per­haps up to 1.5 m by 2100. It’ll be a busy time for car­tog­ra­phers as we are in the process of re-designing the world’s coastlines.

Link to blog post:  http://sciblogs.co.nz/degrees-of-change/2009/10/12/polar-ice-keeps-melting-%E2%80%93-at-a-faster-and-faster-rate/

I. Velicogna, GRL 36, Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE

Geophysical Research Letters, 36 (2009) L19503; doi: 10.1029/2009GL040222. 

Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE

Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE

I. Velicogna (Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA; and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, U.S.A.)

Received 28 July 2009; accepted 3 September 2009; published 13 October 2009.

Abstract

We use monthly measurements of time-variable gravity from the GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellite gravity mission to determine the ice mass-loss for the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets during the period between April 2002 and February 2009. We find that during this time period the mass loss of the ice sheets is not a constant, but accelerating with time, i.e., that the GRACE observations are better represented by a quadratic trend than by a linear one, implying that the ice sheets contribution to sea level becomes larger with time. In Greenland, the mass loss increased from 137 Gt/yr in 2002–2003 to 286 Gt/yr in 2007–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −30 ± 11 Gt/yr² in 2002–2009. In Antarctica, the mass loss increased from 104 Gt/yr in 2002–2006 to 246 Gt/yr in 2006–2009, i.e., an acceleration of −26 ± 14 Gt/yr² in 2002–2009. The observed acceleration in ice sheet mass loss helps reconcile GRACE ice mass estimates obtained for different time periods.

Velicogna, I. (2009). Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE, Geophysical Research Letters, 36, L19503; doi: 10.1029/2009GL040222.

Link to abstract:  http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL040222.shtml

Pen Hadow, Peter Wadhams: The Arctic will be ice-free in summer within 20 years, research says

The Arctic will be ice-free in summer within 20 years, research says

by Ben Webster, Environment Editor, The Times Online, October 15, 2009

Ships will be able to sail in open water to the North Pole in the summer of 2020, according to a study that found a rapid acceleration in the loss of sea ice.

The Arctic will be ice-free in summer within 20 years, the study found, while the Earth will lose the white cap that can be seen in photographs taken from space.

The Polar Ocean Physics Group from Cambridge University compared measurements of ice thickness recorded by a Royal Navy nuclear submarine with those taken two years later in the same area by Pen Hadow, the explorer.

The two sets of measurements were consistent, revealing that the findings by HMS Tireless in 2007 were not an aberration caused by a particularly warm year.

Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge, said that cargo ships would no longer need to rely on special ice-breaking vessels to cross from the Pacific to the Atlantic via the Northwest Passage. The route would be ice-free for several months every year, cutting more than 3,000 miles from the normal journey from the Far East to Europe via the Suez Canal.

“The North Pole will be exposed in ten years. You would be able to sail a Japanese car carrier across the North Pole and out into the Atlantic,” Professor Wadhams said.

“The ice will retreat to a zone north of Greenland and Ellesmere Island by 2020, and that area will be less than half the present summer area. The change in the Arctic summer sea ice is the biggest impact global warming is having on the physical appearance of the planet.”

This month, the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, which is part of the University of Colorado, said that Arctic ice coverage was the third-lowest since satellite records began in 1979.

The coverage was greater than in 2007 and 2008 largely because of cloudy skies during late summer. Each of the past five years has been one of the five lowest years.

Professor Wadhams, who was on board the submarine supervising sonar measurements of the ice, said that Mr Hadow’s findings confirmed that the underlying trend was towards increasingly thin and patchy ice cover.
Mr Hadow and his two team members spent 73 days between March 1 and May 7 this year walking 280 miles (450.6 km) across the Arctic while taking measurements.

They drilled 1,500 holes and found that the average thickness of ice floes was 1.8 m (5.9 ft).

This was too thin to have survived the previous year’s summer melting and indicated that the area of moving ice had been formed in open sea during the winter.

Mr Hadow said that future expeditions to the Arctic in summer would need to change their techniques and equipment to cope with more frequent stretches of open water.

“A hundred years ago explorers used dogs to haul sledges and then we went through the stage of people hauling sledges,” he said. “Now we have people wearing immersion suits and needing to swim, with the sledge floating. I foresee a time when the sledge will become more of a canoe.”

Mr Hadow said that he had decided to change the focus of his polar expeditions from exploration to collecting data that could help to predict changes in the climate.

Martin Summerkorn, climate change adviser to the WWF Arctic Programme, said that the loss of sea ice predicted by the Cambridge study would have profound consequences beyond the polar region.
Without ice to reflect sunlight, the Arctic Ocean would warm more quickly, resulting in the release of greenhouse gases stored in the Arctic permafrost soils. These soils contain twice as much carbon as is in the atmosphere.

Mr Summerkorn said that the warming of the Arctic surface waters would accelerate the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, speeding up the sea level rise. “This could lead to flooding affecting one quarter of the world’s population and extreme global weather changes,” he said.

Link to article:  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/earth-environment/article6875260.ece

Satyasiba Bedamatta, Centre for Environmental & Social Concerns, India

Dear Readers,

I would like to introduce a researcher from India -- Satyasiba Bedamatta.

I am not able to copy the text from his pdf files, so I will provide links to them here:

Centre for Environmental & Social Concerns (CESC:  a not-for- profit resource centre, inter-disciplinary initiatives in environment & development) -- just a sample, below:

CESC Working Papers

Working Paper on Sustainability of Village Institutions: Geevan C.P. and Satyasiba Bedamatta (2005)

Sustainability of Village Institutions - Forestry and Livelihoods: Gram Vikas Mandals in South Gujarat, India (Promoted by AKRSP) - C.P.Geevan and Satyasiba Bedamatta (2007)

The Sustainability of Village Institutions under JFM - Some Issues Emerging from the Case Studies of the NGO Experiences from Gujarat, India. Geevan C.P. and Satyasiba Bedamatta Pre-Print from the selected papers from the proceedings of: National Workshop on JFM at Crossroads: Future Strategy and Action Programme for Institutionalizing Community Forestry, Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), Bhopal, April 20-22, 2006

http://www.cesc-india.org/Download-Docs.html

http://kalingatimes.com/views/news_20071222-fishing-in-troubled-water.htm

http://www.kalingatimes.com/views/news_20071222-fishing-in-troubled-water.htm

http://www.tathya.in/story.asp?sno=1436

http://www.tathya.in/story.asp?sno=1466

Joseph Romm: Skeptical Science explains how we know global warming is happening: It’s the oceans, stupid!

Skeptical Science explains how we know global warming is happening: It’s the oceans, stupid!

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress, October 10, 2009

The empirical data has spoken. Cancel the global cooling party. Global warming is still happening.

The planet is heating up, thanks to human-generated emissions of greenhouse gases.  But as a new NOAA-led study, “An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950” (subs. req’d, release here) concluded:

[S]ince 1950, the planet released about 20 percent of the warming influence of heat-trapping greenhouse gases to outer space as infrared energy. Volcanic emissions lingering in the stratosphere offset about 20 percent of the heating by bouncing solar radiation back to space before it reached the surface. Cooling from the lower-atmosphere aerosols produced by humans balanced 50 percent of the heating. Only the remaining 10 percent of greenhouse-gas warming actually went into heating the Earth, and almost all of it went into the ocean.

Note that this Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres study was done “without using global climate models.”

Figure 1: “Total Earth Heat Content [anomaly] from 1950 (Murphy et al. 2009). Ocean data taken from Domingues et al 2008.”

That figure comes from the first of two posts by the terrific website Skeptical Science, which I repost below.  Skeptical Science is an excellent, well-organized site to send convincible people for a shredding of the standard, long-debunked denier talking points.

Now I’m sure the deniers and delayers out there are shrieking, “There are peer reviewed analyses that document that upper ocean warming has halted since 2003!” — a claim I dealt with in my July post, “Like father, like son: Roger Pielke Sr. also doesn’t understand the science of global warming — or just chooses to willfully misrepresent it.”

Subsequently, however, another JGR article, “Global hydrographic variability patterns during 2003–2008” (subs. req’d, draft here) details an analysis of “monthly gridded global temperature and salinity fields from the near-surface layer down to 2000 m depth based on Argo measurements.”  Background on Argo here.  

Their findings are summed up in this figure:

Figure [2]: Time series of global mean heat storage (0–2000 m), measured in 10⁸ Jm^-2.

Still warming, after all these years!  And just where you’d expect it.  The study makes clear that upper ocean heat content, perhaps not surprisingly, is simply far more variable than deeper ocean heat content, and thus an imperfect indicator of the long-term warming trend.

UPDATE:  Yes, I am aware of the recent upper-ocean heat content data on the web.  Please note that plots of very recent, highly variable upper-ocean content heat data down to 700 meters from unpeer-reviewed sources do not trump peer-reviewed analysis of much longer-term data down to 2000 m.  Is it too much to ask people to actually read this entire post before posting comments?

What follows is a repost of two articles from Skeptical Science discussing these figures and the recent studies in more detail:

[I have renamed the figure in Part 2, "Figure 2" for the sake of clarity.]

How we know global warming is still happening, Part 1

Skeptics proclaim that global warming stopped in 1998. That we’re now experiencing global cooling. However, these arguments overlook one simple physical reality — the land and atmosphere are only one small fraction of the Earth’s climate (albeit the part we inhabit). Global warming is by definition global. The entire planet is accumulating heat due to an energy imbalance. The atmosphere is warming. Oceans are accumulating energy. Land absorbs energy and ice absorbs heat to melt. To get the full picture on global warming, you need to view the Earth’s entire heat content.

This analysis is performed in An observationally based energy balance for the Earth since 1950 (Murphy 2009) which adds up heat content from the ocean, atmosphere, land and ice. To calculate the Earth’s total heat content, the authors used data of ocean heat content from the upper 700 metres. They included heat content from deeper waters down to 3000 metres depth. They computed atmospheric heat content using the surface temperature record and the heat capacity of the troposphere. Land and ice heat content (eg – the energy required to melt ice) were also included.
[See Figure 1 above.]

A look at the Earth’s total heat content clearly shows global warming has continued past 1998. So why do surface temperature records show 1998 as the hottest year on record? Figure 1 shows the heat capacity of the land and atmosphere are small compared to the ocean (the tiny brown sliver of “land + atmosphere” also includes the heat absorbed to melt ice). Hence, relatively small exchanges of heat between the atmosphere and ocean can cause significant changes in surface temperature.

In 1998, an abnormally strong El Nino caused heat transfer from the Pacific Ocean to the atmosphere. Consequently, we experienced above average surface temperatures. Conversely, the last few years have seen moderate La Nina conditions which had a cooling effect on global temperatures. And the last few months have swung back to warmer El Nino conditions. This has coincided with the warmest June-August sea surface temperatures on record. This internal variation where heat is shuffled around our climate is the reason why surface temperature is such a noisy signal.

Figure 1 also underscores just how much global warming the planet is experiencing. Since 1970, the Earth’s heat content has been rising at a rate of 6 x 10²¹ Joules per year. In more meaningful terms, the planet has been accumulating energy at a rate of 190,260 GigaWatts. Considering a typical nuclear power plant has an output of 1 GigaWatt, imagine 190,000 nuclear power plants pouring their energy output directly into our oceans.

Figure 1 only goes as far as 2003 as the ocean heat data used (Domingues 2008) only goes that far. What has global warming been doing since then? Since 2003, ocean heat data has been measured by the newly deployed Argo network. However, there have been teething problems with the Argo buoys experiencing pressure sensor issues that impose a cooling bias on the data.

Consequently there have been several data analyses on ocean heat since 2003. One reconstruction of ocean heat show cooling since 2003 (Willis 2008). Other analyses of the Argo data show ocean warming (Levitus 2009, Leuliette 2009, Cazenave 2009).

How do we determine which analyses are more accurate? Ocean heat data can also be independently determined through other empirical means. Cazenave 2009 uses satellite gravity measurements to create two independent estimates of ocean heat – both find warming. Sea level has been inexorably rising since 2003. As a large portion of sea level rise is due to thermal expansion from ocean warming, this is an indirect confirmation of warming.

Lastly, the planet’s energy imbalance is confirmed by satellite measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation. Earth’s Global Energy Budget (Trenberth 2009) examines satellite measurements for the Mar 2000 to May 2004 period and finds the planet is accumulating energy at a rate of 0.9 ± 0.15 W m⁻². This is consistent with the amount of heat accumulating in the ocean. Preliminary analysis on the latest CERES satellite data shows an increasing energy imbalance from 2004 to the end of 2008 (although this data is yet to be published, more on this later).

So the point to remember when considering short term cooling trends in surface temperature records is that the atmosphere is only one small part of a planet which is in energy imbalance. Empirical measurements show the planet continues to accumulate heat. More energy is coming in than is radiating back out to space. Global warming continued past 1998 and is still happening.

How we know global warming is happening, Part 2

In our last post, we determined whether global warming was still happening by adding up all the heat content of the climate system.  Murphy 2009 performed this analysis and found that that planet has been accumulating heat up to 2003. Unfortunately their data ends there as the ocean data they used from Domingues (2008) stops at the end of 2003. So how do we find out what’s happened from 2003 until now? Unfortunately, there is no time series (that I know of) of the planet’s total heat content up to present time. However, we do have the next best thing.

Global hydrographic variability patterns during 2003–2008 (Schuckmann 2009) analyses ocean temperature measurements by the Argo network, constructing a map of ocean heat content down to 2000 metres (H/T to Chris for bringing it to my attention). This is significantly deeper than other recent papers that focus on upper ocean heat, only going down to 700 metres. They constructed the following time series of global ocean heat:
[See Figure 2 above.]

Globally, the oceans have still been steadily accumulating heat right to the end of 2008. Combined with the results of Murphy 2009 who finds the planet accumulating heat right to 2003, we now see a picture of unbroken global warming. Over the last 5 years, the oceans have been absorbing heat at a rate of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm⁻².

So what is our planet’s total energy imbalance? Indulge me as I perform some rough back-of-a-napkin calculations. Murphy 2009 found that about 5.6% of the planet’s energy imbalance went into the land and atmosphere. In other words, 94.4% of global warming goes into the oceans. So if the ocean is absorbing 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm⁻², this puts the total energy imbalance at around 0.82 ± 0.12 Wm⁻². This is a slight underestimate as Murphy 2009 included ocean heat down to 3000m (remember this is back-of-a-napkin stuff).

How does this value compare to other estimates of energy imbalance? Hansen 2005, using ocean heat data, calculated the planet’s energy imbalance around 2003 to be 0.85 Wm⁻². Trenberth 2009 examined satellite measurements of incoming and outgoing radiation for the March 2000 to May 2004 period and found the planet accumulating energy at a rate of 0.9 ± 0.15 Wm⁻².

All these estimates are consistent with each other. Most importantly, all find a statistically significant positive energy imbalance. The empirical data has spoken. Cancel the global cooling party. Global warming is still happening.

Precisely.

Link to Climate Progress blog:  http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/10/skeptical-science-global-warming-not-cooling-is-still-happening-ocean-heat-content/

Joseph Romm: NASA reports hottest June to September on record*; NOAA says “weak” El Niño “expected to strengthen and last through” winter

NASA reports hottest June to September on record*; NOAA says “weak” El Niño “expected to strengthen and last through” winter

by Joseph Romm, Climate Progress blog, October 13, 2009
 
Fast on the heels of the second warmest August on record and warmest June-July-August for the oceans, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reports that this was the second hottest September on record.
Unlike NOAA, which will announce its September global analysis in a few days, NASA just quietly updates its data set (here).  So you have to do a little math to see that for the June through September period, 2009 now tops both 2005 and 1998.  I put the asterisk in the headline since these four months in 2009 are only slightly warmer than those in 1998.

I’m not cherry-picking these last four months, but rather ENSO-picking them.  The reason 1998 was so anomalously warm even beyond the human-caused trend was the uber-El Niño.  Back in January, NASA had predicted:  “Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.”

Then, back in early June NOAA put out “El Niño Watch,” which I noted meant that “record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record.”  So here we are.

What makes these record temps especially impressive is that we’re at “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century,” according to NASA.  It’s just hard to stop the march of anthropogenic global warming, well, other than by reducing GHG emissions, that is.

Another thing that makes these record temps impressive is that we’re only in a “weak El Niño,” according to the latest monthly “El Niño/Southern oscillation (ENSO) Diagnostic Discussion” of the Climate Prediction Center of NOAA’s National Weather Service:

Synopsis: El Niño is expected to strengthen and last through the Northern Hemisphere winter 2009-2010.

A weak El Niño continued during September 2009, as sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies remained nearly unchanged across much of the equatorial Pacific Ocean (Figs. 1 & 2). Since the transition to El Niño conditions during June, the weekly values of the Niño-3.4 index have remained between +0.7°C and +0.9°C (Fig. 2). Subsurface oceanic heat content (average temperatures in the upper 300m of the ocean, Fig. 3) anomalies continued to reflect a deep layer of anomalous warmth between the ocean surface and the thermocline, particularly in the central and east-central Pacific (Fig. 4)….  These oceanic and atmospheric anomalies reflect an ongoing weak El Niño.

A majority of the model forecasts for the Niño-3.4 SST index (Fig. 6) suggest that El Niño will reach at least moderate strength during the Northern Hemisphere fall (3-month Niño-3.4 SST index of +1.0°C or greater). Many model forecasts even suggest a strong El Niño (3-month Niño-3.4 SST index in excess of +1.5°C) during the fall and winter, but in recent months some models, including the NCEP CFS, have over-predicted the degree of warming observed so far in the Niño-3.4 region (Fig. 7). Based on the model forecasts, the seasonality of El Niño, and the continuation of westerly wind bursts, El Niño is expected to strengthen and most likely peak at moderate strength.

What is particularly interesting to me is the prediction that, while his is not going to be a blockbuster El Niño in terms of amplitude, as we saw in 1997-1998, it may turn out to be a pretty long one.  If it lasts through June 2010, then that year seems poised to be the hottest on record.
Related Post:

• Skeptical Science explains how we know global warming is happening: It’s the oceans, stupid!

Link to Climate Progress blog:  http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/13/nasa-hottest-june-to-september-on-record-noaa-weak-el-nino-is-expected-to-strengthen/

Cutting non-CO2 pollutants can delay abrupt climate change, solve “fast half” of climate problem

Cutting non-CO₂ pollutants can delay abrupt climate change,

solve “fast half” of climate problem 

           

Washington, D.C., October 12, 2009 – Reducing non-CO₂ climate change agents such as black carbon soot, tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), as well as expanding bio-sequestration through biochar production, can forestall fast approaching abrupt climate changes, according to Nobel Laureate Dr. Mario Molina and co-authors in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The paper’s authors said that pursuing these solutions could change the character of the United Nations climate change conference taking place this December in Copenhagen.

“Cutting HFCs, black carbon, tropospheric ozone, and methane can buy us about 40 years before we approach the dangerous threshold of 2 ˚C warming,” said co-author Professor Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a Distinguished Professor of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

“By targeting these short-term climate forcers, we can make a down payment on climate and provide momentum going into the December negotiations in Copenhagen,” said co-author Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.  “The Obama Administration and other key governments need to take up the fast-action climate agenda before it is too late.”

HFCs are powerful greenhouse gases originally developed as substitutes for ozone-depleting chemicals.  They are poised to become a larger part of the climate problem over the next few decades. HFCs are used primarily as refrigerants and in making insulating foam, and emissions are expected to grow dramatically due to increased demand for air conditioning in developing countries.  By 2050, HFC emissions could equal up to 19% of global CO₂ emissions under business-as-usual scenarios. The good news, the paper points out, is that a binding legal agreement exists that can cut HFCs now—the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty—and that many alternatives to HFCs have already been developed and are on the shelf waiting for the right regulatory incentive from the Montreal Protocol to be deployed.

 “The Montreal Protocol has already delayed climate change by seven to 12 years, and put the ozone layer on the path to recovery later this century,” said Dr. Mario Molina, recipient of the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his path-breaking work in 1974 that sounded the alarm on ozone-depleting CFCs. “The Montreal Protocol is critical for avoiding abrupt climate change.  We have to take advantage of the proven ability of this legally binding treaty to quickly phase down HFCs.”  

The small island nations of Micronesia and Mauritius submitted a joint proposal in April to phase down production and consumption of HFCs under the Montreal Protocol. North American leaders followed suit with their own joint proposal, which builds on the islands’ submission. The Montreal Protocol is an essential strategy for the island nations to achieve fast mitigation to slow sea-level rise that is already starting to destroy their countries. “We must consider all viable strategies that will help protect vulnerable island nations, in particular, those strategies that have a track record of success, such as the Montreal Protocol,” said Ambassador Masao Nakayama, Permanent Representative of the Federated States of Micronesia to the United Nations. Although the Kyoto Protocol currently addresses emissions of HFCs, it does not address production and consumption.

A neglected fast-action strategy presented in the paper is reducing black carbon soot, an aerosol produced largely from the incomplete combustion of diesel fuels and biofuels, and from biomass burning.  It is now considered to be the second or third largest contributor to climate change.  Black carbon is responsible for almost 50% of the 1.9˚C increase in warming of the Arctic since 1890, as well as significant melting of the Himalaya-Tibetan glaciers that feed the major rivers of Asia, providing fresh water to billions of people. 

Researchers consider black carbon an ideal target for achieving quick mitigation because it only remains in the atmosphere a few days to a few weeks and can be reduced by expanding the use of diesel particulate filters for vehicles and clean-burning or solar cookstoves to replace those burning dung and wood. With indoor air pollution killing 1.6 million people a year, global action to cut soot emissions would reap major benefits for both public health and climate.

 “If we reduce black carbon emissions worldwide by 50% by fully deploying all available emissions-control technologies, we could delay the warming effects of CO₂ by one to two decades and at the same time greatly improve the health of those living in heavily polluted regions,” said Dr. Ramanathan.

Like black carbon, ground level or tropospheric ozone doubles as a major climate forcer and health hazard. It also lowers crop yields. A recent study reported that ozone’s damage to crop yields in 2000 resulted in an economic loss of up to $26 billion annually. It is formed by “ozone precursor” gases such as carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, methane, and other hydrocarbons, many of which can be reduced by improving the efficiency of industrial combustion processes. Reducing tropospheric ozone by 50% could buy another decade’s worth of time for countries to start making substantial cuts in CO₂.

Biochar is one of the few promising “carbon-negative” strategies that can drawdown existing concentrations of CO₂. The fine-grained charcoal product is a stable form of carbon that can be plowed into soil where it remains for hundreds to thousands of years, also serving as a natural fertilizer. Biochar comes from cooking biomass waste at low temperatures with minimal oxygen—a process called pyrolisis. “The other fast-action strategies can quickly mitigate emissions, but to back away from the cliff of abrupt climate change, we need biochar,” said Zaelke.

Although most of the world is focused on CO₂ in the months leading up to Copenhagen, the authors of the paper hope that policymakers will recognize the advantages of implementing these fast-action strategies to complement reductions in CO₂. “These fast-action strategies will support the long-term CO₂ solution by stopping near-term climate change with non-CO₂ solutions,” said Dr. Stephen Andersen. “This will bring momentum to those negotiating the international agreement and the U.S. legislation.”

The paper is part of a “Tipping elements in Earth systems” special feature to be published in PNAS later this year. 

“Cutting CO₂ emissions is essential, but it won’t produce cooling fast enough to avoid passing tipping points for abrupt climate change,” said Zaelke. “With the world already committed to more than 2˚C of warming, we need these fast-action strategies to put the brakes on climate change, and in the case of biochar, put us in reverse by reducing existing atmospheric concentrations of CO₂.”

“We intend our paper as a call to action,” said co-author K. Madhava Sarma of the Montreal Protocol’s Technology and Economic Assessment Panel.

###

Title: Reducing abrupt climate change risk using the Montreal Protocol and other regulatory actions to complement cuts in CO2 emissions

Authors:  Mario Molina, Durwood Zaelke, K. Madhava Sarma, Stephen O. Andersen,

Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Donald Kaniaru

Available online: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/10/09/0902568106.full.pdf+html

 

For further information on the Montreal Protocol and its contribution to climate protection:

IGSD background note on Montreal protocol: http://www.igsd.org/documents/OzoneDayPR15Sept1055am.pdf

IGSD press release on “North American leaders submit joint proposal to phase down HFCs under Montreal Protocol”: http://www.igsd.org/documents/PR_NAHFCproposal1245pm.pdf

Contact: Alex Viets, IGSD: +1.213.321.0911 or +1.202.498.2457, aviets@igsd.org