90% of disasters are now weather-related, COP 21: New study informs Paris summit delegates that extreme weather in the last two decades has claimed well over half a million lives and cost trillions of dollars

by Tim Radford, Climate News Network, November 27, 2015

LONDON – In the 20 years since the first UN conference on climate change, weather-related disasters have claimed 606,000 human lives, damaged or destroyed 87 million homes, and injured, displaced or left helpless a total of 4.1 billion people.

A new study from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) demonstrates that 90% of all disasters are now weather-related. And the average of 335 weather-related disasters per year in the last 10 years is twice that recorded between 1985 and 1995

The report, "The Human Cost of Weather-Related Disasters 1995–2015," is intended to focus attention during the UN climate change conference – which opens in Paris on Monday − on the damage already inflicted by global warming as a consequence of rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, in turn as a consequence of the human combustion of fossil fuels and the destruction of the planet’s forests.

Development cost

As world leaders head for the summit, referred to as COP21, the numbers alone tell the story. In the last 20 years, there have been 6,457 floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts and other climatic events that meet the UN definition of a disaster − that is, they killed people, displaced communities, or caused damage calculated in millions.

But there are figures nobody can assess. One of these is the true economic cost, especially in terms of economic development.

The UN’s Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, based at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, puts the tally at US$1.891 trillion over the last 20 years.

However, that accounts for about only 71% of all losses attributable to natural hazards. The true figure for disasters – including earthquakes and tsunamis – could be between $250bn and $300bn a year, which would mean a total of up to $6 trillion just for the last decade.

In terms of numbers, the US was hit most often, with 472 recorded tornadoes, ice storms, hurricanes, floods, heatwaves, droughts and other events. China followed with 441, India with 228, the Philippines with 274, and Indonesia with 263.

The greatest loss of lives was in Asia, where 332,000 people died and 3.7 billion were affected. Cyclone Nargis, which hit Myanmar in 2008, claimed 138,000 lives.

Floods accounted for 47% of all weather-related disasters in the 20 years, affecting 2.3 billion people and killing 157,000. Storms accounted for 242,000 deaths, or 40% of the total. Almost 90% of these deaths were in the lower-income nations.

Paradoxically, higher-income countries felt the impact of temperature extremes. Of the 164,000 who perished when the thermometer dropped or climbed to catastrophic levels, 148,000 died during heat waves, and 90% of these deaths were in Europe.

Greater extremes

But drought hit Africa more than any other continent, with 136 arid spells between 1995 and 2015, and 77 of these were in East Africa.

Researchers have repeatedly given warnings that global warming is likely to be accompanied by greater extremes.

“In the long term, an agreement in Paris at COP21 on reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be a significant contribution to reducing damage and loss from disasters, which are partly driven by a warming globe and rising sea levels,” says Margareta Wahlström, head of UNISDR.

“For now, there is a need to reduce existing levels of risk and avoid creating new risk by ensuring that public and private investments are risk-informed and do not increase the exposure of people and economic assets to natural hazards on flood plains, vulnerable low-lying coastlines, and other locations unsuited for human settlement.” 

Most Extreme Weather Has Climate Change Link, Study Says

Global warming has created a 'new normal,' scientists say, and the old hesitance to attribute extreme weather to climate change is outdated.

by Lisa Song, InsideClimate News, June 23, 2015

In the wake of major hurricanes, floods and heat waves, scientists are quick to say that no single weather event can be attributed to climate change until careful analysis draws that conclusion. Now, a new study argues that thinking is backwards, that all extreme weather has a link to climate change.

The default position has been holding science back in connecting weather and climate, concludes the authors of a peer-reviewed paper published Monday in Nature Climate Change.

This "could be a game changer in how these studies are done in [the] future," lead author Kevin Trenberth said in an email.

Trenberth is a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and one of three researchers behind the study.

The paper presents a new research technique that grew out of an idea Trenberth first proposed at a conference in 2010. It also provides scientists examples of how to apply the method, and challenges the conclusions of a 2014 paper that found no climate influence in the massive floods that swept Boulder, Colo., in 2013.

Trenberth said his approach is new, and conventional research methods still dominate the field.

Traditionally, researchers begin with a default assumption that the extreme weather event they're examining is not influenced by human-caused climate change. They then run computer models or other tests to see if global warming has increased the intensity or likelihood of that event.

But Trenberth's team says this method can lead to "false negatives" that underestimates the role of climate change. It's particularly problematic when scientists are studying extreme weather driven by atmospheric circulation—factors such as weather patterns and storm patterns—when it's difficult to separate the influence of climate change from natural variability.

Trenberth's paper instead suggests focusing on thermodynamic changes caused by global warming, such as increased sea-surface temperatures, humidity and sea level rise. Unlike atmospheric circulation patterns, scientists have a much better understanding of how climate change affects thermodynamic shifts, said study co-author John Fasullo, a NCAR project scientist.

According to the study, these warming-fueled changes play an important role in increasing the intensity of storms and the impact of storm surges, creating "a new normal" in the underlying conditions that influence all weather events.

"Because global warming is real and present, it is not a question as to whether it is playing a role, but what that role is," the authors wrote.

"We're not even interested in the question of the cause," Fasullo explained. "We're trying to understand the influence climate change will have on extreme weather events."

In fact, Fasullo says, even the term "new normal" can be misleading, because it implies that the climate is no longer changing, when in reality the climate won't stabilize until greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere level off.

Trenberth said he expects pushback from scientists who favor the older methods, but he believes "a sea change is in order with the conservative scientists and we need to stop proving over and over again that climate change is having effects...I hope that it leads to more fruitful studies and better communications with the public."

Higher Seas, Higher Temps

The Earth had droughts and hurricanes long before humans, but we're "changing the way these events unfold," Fasullo said. "So from our point of view, this default assumption of no climate change [influence] is a poor place to start the quantitative analysis. You wouldn't want to assume nothing is changing."

Kerry Emanuel, a professor of atmospheric science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who wasn't involved in study, agreed that a lot of evidence now points to conditions changing because of global warming. But, he said, many scientists would prefer to stick with the default assumption that extreme weather events are not influenced by climate change until proven otherwise.

"The real crux of the matter is not fooling yourself" into a false sense of confidence, he said. "Scientists are very guarded about that possibility."

The study gives several examples of how to use the new method. Supertyphoon Haiyan, which hit the Philippines in November 2013, was driven in large part by the natural variability of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean. But the storm surge was made worse by an increase in local sea levels, which were nearly 12 inches higher than they were in 1993.

Another example is the "snowmageddon" storm that hit Washington, D.C., in February 2010. The intensity of the blizzard—which dropped up to three feet of snow in the mid-Atlantic region—was influenced by high sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above normal), which brought large amounts of moisture into the storm.

In a third example, Trenberth's paper disputed the conclusions of a 2014 study published in the Bulletin of the American Meterological Society, which found that the 2013 Boulder floods were caused by an extremely rare concurrence of weather patterns that brought a huge amount of moisture over the region—and climate change played no discernible factor in that setup. But Trenberth's team said the excessive moisture was enabled by unusually high sea-surface temperatures off the coast of Mexico.

'Preparing for the Last Disaster'

Emanuel said Trenberth's new approach isn't wrong, but it's open to misinterpretation because it doesn't consider all aspects of climate change's possible impacts.

For instance, the research method might show that a storm identical to Haiyan would have had a smaller impact if it had hit the Philippines 100 years ago. That information is useful, but it has to be interpreted correctly in a limited context, Emanuel said. "It is a very narrowly posed and narrowly answered question."

Further analysis would be required to answer other related questions, such as, what is the probability that Haiyan would have formed at all under the lower sea-surface temperatures of the past? And is it more or less likely to have followed Haiyan's exact same storm track? Those answers would provide a more complete picture of global warming's impacts, he said.

The study also has implications for disaster planning. If climate change exerts an even bigger influence on extreme weather than previously thought, then it emphasizes how the U.S. is "woefully underprepared in regards to climate adaptation planning," said Melanie Gall, a University of South Carolina professor who studies disaster risk and emergency management.

"All of our current planning is so retrospective," Gall said. "We always prepare for the last disaster" instead of looking at future risks and how conditions will change with global warming, she said.

Many of the states that are most vulnerable to extreme weather—including Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida—are politically conservative, and don't consider climate change on a state level, she said. "I think what this study shows," she added, "is we need to plan for it, and it needs to be recognized, and not wait until we have the perfect evidence."

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/23062015/most-extreme-weather-has-climate-change-link-study-says-global-warming-trenberth-ncar-sea-levels

Eric Holthaus: Why I'm a climate change alarmist

Typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines with the strongest tropical cyclone landfall ever recorded. Photo by Dondi Tawatao/Getty Images

by Eric Holthaus, Slate, August 19, 2014

I’m sick of having to hide it, so here goes: I’m a climate change alarmist.

There, I said it. After years of fighting off Internet trolls and being ridiculed on Fox News for caring about the Earth and its inhabitants enough to make big changes to my life, I’ve had enough. It’s time that we climate change alarmists reclaim this dismissive term and defend ourselves.

Many of us have been lambasted for talking about the fundamental health of the planet. Climate scientist Kerry Emanuel has written “those interested in treating the issue as an objective problem in risk assessment and management are labeled ‘alarmists,’ a particularly infantile smear considering what is at stake.”

Now, I’m also an optimist. I’m convinced that humanity has the ability to tackle the problem and come to international agreement on how to do so in a fair way. It simply must happen. But for something so serious, it seems like there’s a general lack of alarm, a lack of emotion, and—to be blunt—a lack of ambition to act with the scale and urgency the issue requires.

Tragically, there’s a vast mismatch between our actions to date and what’s needed. This isn’t just another big environmental issue. When the ozone hole was discovered decades ago, the world got together and agreed to change the chemical used in making refrigerators cold. In hindsight, that seems incredibly easy compared to this. Climate change cuts to the core of who we are as a civilization and what kind of world we want to create for our kids. Perhaps understandably, that’s meant that a lot of smart people are really pessimistic about our future.

I may be optimistic, but I’m not naive. I know that the vast majority of humans don’t make daily decisions based on analyzing scientific charts and graphs. The climate change alarmism community has made some strategic mistakes by incessantly focusing on the science and expecting grand changes. In my view, to make any sort of real progress, we’ve instead got to embrace our humanity—and yes, that means shedding the occasional tear when the reality of our situation really hits home.

Last year, days after watching his home country, the Philippines, utterly destroyed by Typhoon Haiyan—the strongest tropical cyclone landfall ever recorded worldwide—climate commissioner Yeb Saño broke down in the middle of the United Nations’ international climate change negotiations, saying “we cannot sit and stay helpless staring at this international climate stalemate. It is now time to take action.” His tears motivated an impromptu global movement. At this point, we need fewer lightbulb-changing PSAs and more of this.

As a scientist and journalist, I’m not supposed to have emotions. I’m supposed to calmly report researchers’ findings as if my family and I weren’t also being affected. But looking at the data in as much detail as I have, it’s impossible not to be alarmed. On an average day, I’m also disgusted, terrified, and angry.

So why aren’t more people outraged?

Few things are more important to human life than the environment, but hundreds of generations of experience have baked in a reasonable assurance that the future will be approximately like the past.

For the first time in human history, it won’t.

Save the specter of nuclear war or an Armageddon-style asteroid strike, there’s really not much that could wipe us out as quickly as climate change. Those two things haven’t happened (yet), but global warming is happening, right now.

The biggest problem with responding to climate change is that at the human scale, it’s impossible to fathom what’s happening. The problem isn’t how hot it’s getting (it’s been hotter before for different reasons) but the sheer rate of change. In a sentence, here’s what’s happening: Carbon-storing rocks, gas, and oil that took millions of years to accumulate are being returned to the atmosphere over a period of a few decades—almost instantaneously. That’s producing geologic-timescale changes in the span of a single human lifetime.

If you’re a piece of basalt, maybe you can think on geologic timescales. I can’t.

Within our lifetimes, we’ll almost assuredly enter a climate phase that hasn’t been seen since before humans even existed. And the scarier thing, for me, is what’s needed to get back on track. The scale of the problem demands a revolution in thought and action. Pioneering climate scientist James Hansen, who recently quit his job at NASA so he could protest more effectively, is calling for a “human tipping point.”

A lot of us get a mental short circuit when we think about climate change. It’s so crazy, it can’t possibly be happening, right?

Climate change is so crazy, it can’t possibly be happening, right?

The most visible manifestation of this is the debate between hard-core climate activists and vocal skeptics who deride the scientific consensus. I think this is distracting, so I’ve tried to largely remove myself from it. (Don’t feed the trolls, right?) There’s been a fascinating line of research lately that examines something called “stealth denial.” It’s become clear that vast sections of society—including people who can really make a difference—have largely tuned out climate change. This seems to be happening for three reasons: They believe they don’t contribute to the problem that much, they believe that the problem is so scary that they hope it goes away, or they believe their individual actions to help out won’t matter that much anyway. Here’s what our message should be: You can make a difference. In fact, you’re our best hope.

In last week’s Slate Culture Gabfest podcast, there was a fabulous discussion of talking about the weather. In conversations with friends, it’s clear that there’s a growing realization that something is somehow different. In the Gabfest, Dana Stevens said she thought that weather and climate has recently re-entered public discourse in a way that’s new: “The two things are woven together in ways we can't extricate.” John Swansburg lamented the loss of the traditionally easy conversation starter: “Talking about the weather brings up all these fears and anxieties that maybe it didn’t in the past.” The hard part is turning that fear and anxiety into real change.

Top Comment

I think a big part of the problem the global warming "alarmists" are struggling with is compassion fatigue.We've been hearing apocalyptic tales from the environmental movement for the last 50 years or so.  More...

-Robert Helbing

405 CommentsJoin In

It’s clear to me the status quo isn’t working anymore. It’s time to shake things up. Our actions for the next few years and decades will determine if basic things like agriculture and coastal living can continue on for the next hundreds of years in vast stretches of the planet. More importantly, it’s time for us to embrace the range of emotions we feel when confronted with the realization that the planet we’ve known for generations is fundamentally changing. Right now, with calm, clear rationality, big corporations and their friends in Congress continue to claim that they've got everything under control.

And if that isn’t something to be alarmed about, I don't know what is.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/20/climate_change_alarmist_optimistic_realistic_not_na_ve_assessment_of_global.html

Climate worries insurers and military

by Alex Kirby, Climate News Network, May 15, 2014

The US Navy helps with the clean-up in New York state after Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Image: US Navy via Wikimedia Commons

Powerful voices in finance and the armed forces raise concerns about the risks of increasingly extreme weather events causing billions of dollars of damage and potentially igniting humanitarian disasters and regional conflicts

LONDON, 15 May − The risks associated with climate change have got some very important people worried − the people who pick up the bills, and those who clear up the mess or try to prevent it happening.

The world’s biggest and oldest insurance market, Lloyd’s of London, has published a report that urges insurers to include climate risks in their models. It says: “Scientific research points conclusively to the existence of climate change driven by human activity.

“Nevertheless, significant uncertainty remains on the nature and extent of the changes to our climate and the specific impacts this will generate. Many of the effects will become apparent over the coming decades and anticipating them will require forward projections, not solely historical data.”

Quoting the Munich Re insurance group , the World Bank says damage and weather-related losses around the world have increased from an annual average of $50bn in the 1980s to nearly $200bn over the last decade.

Causing havoc

The Lloyd’s report was published the day after the US National Climate Assessment (NCA) warned Americans that climate change is already causing havoc across the country. John Holdren, the White House science adviser, said the NCA was the “loudest and clearest alarm bell to date signalling the need to take urgent action to combat the threats to Americans from climate change.”

The most expensive year on record for natural disasters was 2011, when insured losses cost the industry more than $126bn. In 2012, Superstorm Sandy caused $35bn of insured losses, making it the most expensive hurricane in US history after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The Lloyd’s report says a 20 cm rise in sea level at the southern tip of Manhattan Island increased Sandy’s surge losses by 30% (up to $8bn) in New York alone.

John Nelson, chairman of Lloyd’s, told The Guardian newspaper in London: “The destruction Sandy brought to the eastern US seaboard was responsible for claims of up to $300m in lost fine art, a consequence of the many expensive US beachfront homes damaged.”

Typhoon Haiyan, which devastated much of the Philippines and other parts of south-east Asia in November 2013, was one of the strongest tropical cyclones on record.

Trevor Maynard, head of exposure management and reinsurance at Lloyd’s, said: “Climate change is very much here to stay. Hurricanes are getting stronger worldwide, and especially over the north Atlantic. . .  At the moment we are heading for a rise of four degrees by the end of the century.”

Mission reality

IT’S NOT ONLY the insurers who believe that climate change is a real and growing risk. Increasingly, the prospect is preoccupying military planners.

Mark Wright, a Pentagon spokesman, said: “This is a mission reality, not a political debate. The scientific forecast is for more Arctic ice melt, more sea-level rise, more intense storms, more flooding from storm surge, and more drought.”

A former US Navy officer, retired Vice-Admiral Lee Gunn, is reported by NBC News as saying that the 2011 Arab Spring uprising could in part be traced to a winter drought in China, plus record heat waves and flooding in several other countries, including Russia.

Gunn concluded: “There was a drought and a wheat shortage that resulted in an increase in wheat prices and, therefore, an increase in bread prices − a staple in North Africa.”

NBC says US security experts are also concerned by possible threats to the rice harvest in south-east Asia, and specifically in Vietnam. They say the melting of the Himalayan glaciers would add to sea-level rise, ruining rice production and ravaging Bangladesh. If it did, they believe, that could create a flow of refugees into India, and also threaten fresh water resources in India and Pakistan.

Dennis McGinn, the US Navy Assistant Secretary for Energy, Installations and Environment, told NBC that there were also worries in military circles about unstable governments and fragile societies.

“The last thing in the world these nations need are the severe and more frequent effects of bad weather, including crop failures,” McGinn said. “Therein is a recipe for the kind of instability that will inevitably involve the United States in humanitarian assistance, disaster relief or, indeed, in a regional conflict.”

A further report, by 16 retired generals and admirals, says climate change is a direct threat to national security and the US economy. The authors, members of the Military Advisory Board of the not-for-profit CNA Corporation, blame rising temperatures for, in part, worsening international tension. 

Their study says that the impacts of climate change are already intensifying instability in vulnerable regions, especially the resource-rich and rapidly changing Arctic. It says the projected impacts within the US will threaten its homeland security and major sectors of its economy. 

http://www.climatenewsnetwork.net/2014/05/climate-worries-insurers-and-military/

If you like drama, this is fairly exciting: Monster El Nino Emerging From the Depths: Nose of Massive Kelvin Wave Breaks Surface in Eastern Pacific

by Robert Schribbler, from his blog, March 25, 2014

(A monster Kelvin wave, possibly more powerful than the 1997-98 event, is now rushing toward the surface of the Eastern Pacific. Image source: NOAA/ESRL.)

We are observing an extraordinarily powerful Kelvin Wave, one that was likely intensified by factors related to human global warming, traveling across the Pacific. It appears to be an epic event in the making. One that may be hotter and stronger than even the record-shattering 1997-98 El Nino. What this means is that we may well be staring down the throat of a global warming riled monster.

*   *    *    *    *

Ever since the early 2000s very strong east-to-west trade winds have been blowing across the Pacific. By around 2010, the force of this wind pattern had risen to never before seen records. Over the years, these record winds piled very warm waters in a region of the world east of the Philippines and Australia. As the pool grew warmer, evaporation increased and salinity levels in the hot water pool spiked. Increasing salinity in the zone resulted in a down-welling current that transferred heat into the ocean’s depths.

By 2013, this hot water pool had grown into a vast abyss of heat. Cyclones forming over this zone experienced a kick in intensity as the typical upwelling force of their winds only dredged more hot water from the ocean deeps. It was a pattern that is contrary to typical tropical storm dynamics in which cooler waters drawn up by intense storms tend to limit their peak strength. Not so with mega-typhoon Haiyan, the strongest storm ever to strike land. The cyclonic wind pattern only dredged more heat from the extraordinarily deep hot water. And so the storm only grew stronger and stronger, knowing little in the way of limits before it barreled into an already storm-battered Philippines.

After Haiyan’s passage, the heat pool remained, only growing deeper and more intense, waiting for a change in the wind. And by January of 2014, that wind change was already well on its way.

In Deep, Hot Water

Like an enormous bag waiting to burst eastward, the hot water pool contained temperatures of 29-30 degrees C or hotter and sagged deep, extending up to 150 meters below the ocean surface. A vast stretch of explosive heat that had been held in check from an equatorial surge only by the strongest trade winds on record. But by January, those trade winds had faded. The east-west flow first weakened, then it fluttered, then it died, allowing the wind direction to reverse.

(Did strong trade winds intensify the current Kelvin Wave by piling hot water into the Western Pacific? Top graph shows ocean heat content rise, bottom graph shows zonal wind strength of the trade winds through 2011. Note that IPO divergence roughly correlates with trade wind intensity fluctuation. Image source: England Study.)

This trade wind reversal has, since January, been facilitated by a string of explosive low-pressure systems that developed in the vicinity of the Western Pacific both south and north of the equator. Northern Hemisphere storms circulate in a counter-clockwise fashion, while Southern Hemisphere storms circulate clockwise. When the storms line up, they kick storm winds out along the equator, providing strong reversals to the trade winds and further shoving our hot, monster Kelvin wave to the east.

And as the trade winds fell and reversed due to this sporadic assault of countervailing storms, the hot, deep pool of water surged eastwards. To those on the surface, the motion was invisible. And but for a series of floats spread throughout the Pacific, we would never know a monster thing was rushing along toward the east at a depth of about 150 meters below.

But the floats did their work and by late February it looked like a rather strong heat pulse was on its way across the Pacific Ocean. Risks began to dramatically increase that the heat would breach the surface of the Eastern Equatorial Pacific and set in place the globe-altering weather pattern called El Nino. In a world where human warming was already having serious impacts, the emergence of a new, potentially strong El Nino was not at all a welcome sign. For one, it meant new global high temperature records were likely to soon follow.

It also meant that world food security may well be about to receive yet one more staggering blow.

First Warnings

As the signal for a new El Nino began to appear in the models during late February, NOAA started to issue watches and predictions. Initial estimates were for a 52% chance of El Nino by late 2014.

These warnings caused a ripple of concern through the global food markets. Already reeling under the insults of a series of severe, climate change induced, droughts from Brazil and Argentina, to California and Texas, to the Middle East, to China, the world’s growers were hardly prepared for another series of anomalous weather events. Russia rolling into bread-basket Ukraine further set anxieties alight. But the threat of even a moderate El Nino and its associated droughts and extreme weather seemed to be a rising perfect storm for what was already a terrible year.

Growers in Southeast Asia chided forecasters in the West, with some cautioning that El Nino trackers do their best to quiet down so as not to induce a panic.

Southeast Asia often experiences an interruption of the annual monsoon in association with El Nino. So the region, which was already suffering from ground water shortages, lowering glacial outflows and sporadic periods of intense drought — all conditions related to growth, over-consumption and climate change — could ill afford yet one more strike against it.

Still, the strike appeared to be gathering heat and steam.

A Rising Monster Pushing the Tip of Its Nose up in the Eastern Pacific

As growers and states with marginal or bad food security grew more anxious, the hot water surge intensified. Researchers independent of NOAA began to issue estimates for a 60, 70 even 80% probability for the emergence of El Nino. Others, tracking what now appeared to be the hottest Kelvin wave ever seen, began to issue warnings that a monster event may well be on the way.

(Most recent NOAA Kelvin wave assessment. Top panel shows deep-water high-temperature anomalies telegraphing across the Pacific and pushing toward the surface. Large, deep pool of hot water providing energy to for the wave is visible in the bottom panel. Image source: NOAA.)

At issue were deep ocean temperature anomalies that were now rushing across the Pacific and beginning to rise toward the surface. The zone in late February that had indicated temperature anomalies in the range of +4-6 C was over an area of approximately 48 degrees of longitude. By March 19, the hot zone of 4-6 C above normal temperatures had expanded to cover about 62 degrees of longitude, and contained a hotter 5-6 C anomaly zone that was now larger than the 4-6 C zone from late February. The deep, hot water pool in the Western Pacific was now beginning to set up a kind of bridge in which it could transfer east, dump its heat into the atmosphere and disrupt global weather. Perhaps, somewhat more disturbing, it was linking to a deep pool of warmer water off the coast of South America (also see animation at the top of this post).

By comparison, the monster El Nino of 1997 featured a Kelvin wave covering about the same area but whose high temperature anomalies only peaked out at about 4.5 C above average. So the current Kelvin wave is of approximately the same size but, based on current observations, appears to contain more heat.

The Kelvin wave had also begun to tilt up in the front with its ‘nose’ just starting to break the Pacific Ocean surface at between 120 and 100 West longitude. This put the tip of the rising heat spike almost due south of Baja California and almost due west of the Peru and Ecuador border as of yesterday, March 23.

(Monster El Nino pokes the tip of its nose through Pacific surface waters between 120 W longitude and 100 W longitude along the equator. Image source: NOAA/ESRL.)

In the above ocean temperature anomaly measure for March 23, 2014, we can see a hot pool in the range of 1 to 2 C above average beginning to emerge between 120 and 100 West longitude. It is a heat pulse that has eliminated all but the closest near-shore cool upwelling along the west coast of South America.

Should the rest of the Kelvin wave follow, temperature anomalies in this region will spike well above 4 C and possibly has high as 5-6 C. Such an event would be even stronger than the one seen in 1997-98, drive global temperatures about 0.05 to 0.2 C hotter than previous records in a single year, and set off a series of extreme weather that, when combined with the already severe conditions set in place by human-caused warming, may well be far in excess of those seen during past events.

Links:

NOAA/ESRL

England Study

Abnormally Hot, Deep Pacific Ocean Waters Explode Haiyan into Monster Storm

NOAA El Nino Monitoring

Climate Change Pushing World to the Brink of Food Crisis

The Monsters of Growth Shock Rise: Conflict in the Ukraine, Global Food Crisis, and Spending 500 Billion Dollars to Wreck the Climate

India Times Chides Western Meteorologists about El Nino Predictions

Unusually Intense El Nino May Lie Ahead, Scientists Say

Disquieting Facts About El Nino

Washington Post: A Super El Nino May be on the Way

US Atmospheric Scientists Predict Intense El Nino

Weather Centre: Could the Next Super El Nino Be Forming?

http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/monster-el-nino-emerging-from-the-depths-nose-of-massive-kelvin-wave-breaks-surface-in-eastern-pacific/

Lord Stern: UK storms and floods show climate change is upon us

Author of influential 2006 report on the economics of climate change says wettest and hottest years on record mean world must take action now or face disaster

by Nicholas Lord Stern, The Guardian, February 13, 2014

Satellite image shows scale of storm that hit the UK. Photograph: Neodass/University of Dundee/PA

The record rainfall and storm surges that have brought flooding across the UK are a clear sign that we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change.

Many commentators have suggested that we are suffering from unprecedented extreme weather. There are powerful grounds for arguing that this is part of a trend.

Four of the five wettest years recorded in the UK have occurred from the year 2000 onwards. Over that same period, we have also had the 7 warmest years.

That is not a coincidence. There is an increasing body of evidence that extreme daily rainfall rates are becoming more intense, in line with what is expected from fundamental physics, as the Met Office pointed out earlier this week.

A warmer atmosphere holds more water. Add to this the increase in sea level, particularly along the English Channel, which is making storm surges bigger, and it is clear why the risk of flooding in the UK is rising.

But it is not just here that the impacts of climate change have been felt through extreme weather events over the past few months. Australia has just had its hottest year on record, during which it suffered record-breaking heatwaves and severe bushfires in many parts of the country. And there has been more extreme heat over the past few weeks.

Argentina had one of its worst heatwaves in late December, while parts of Brazil were struck by floods and landslides following record rainfall.

A ship washed ashore by typhoon Haiyan at Anibong in Tacloban, Philippines, 5 February 2014. Photograph: Mark Tran for The Guardian

And very warm surface waters in the north-west Pacific during November fuelled Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall anywhere in the world, which killed more than 5,700 people in the Philippines.

This is a pattern of global change that it would be very unwise to ignore.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last September pointed to a changing pattern of extreme weather since 1950, with more heatwaves and downpours in many parts of the world, as the Earth has warmed by about 0.7 C.

The IPCC has concluded from all of the available scientific evidence that it is 95% likely that most of the rise in global average temperature since the middle of the 20th century is due to emissions of greenhouse gases, deforestation and other human activities.

Sussex police search and rescue officers evacute residents through a flooded street in Egham, Surrey. Photograph: Sang Tan/AP

The upward trend in temperature is undeniable, despite the effects of natural variability in the climate which causes the rate of warming to temporarily accelerate or slow for short periods, as we have seen over the past 15 years.

If we do not cut emissions, we face even more devastating consequences, as unchecked they could raise global average temperature to 4 C or more above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.

This would be far above the threshold warming of 2 C that countries have already agreed that it would be dangerous to breach. The average temperature has not been 2 C above pre-industrial levels for about 115,000 years, when the ice-caps were smaller and global sea level was at least 5 metres higher than today.

The shift to such a world could cause mass migrations of hundreds of millions of people away from the worst-affected areas. That would lead to conflict and war, not peace and prosperity.

Satellite photos of the river Parrett on the Somerset Levels taken before the recent flooding and on 8 February. Photograph: UK Space Agency/SWNS.com

In fact, the risks are even bigger than I realised when I was working on the review of the economics of climate change for the UK government in 2006. Since then, annual greenhouse gas emissions have increased steeply, and some of the impacts, such as the decline of Arctic sea ice, have started to happen much more quickly.

We also under-estimated the potential importance of strong feedbacks, such as the thawing of the permafrost to release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as well as tipping points beyond which some changes in the climate may become effectively irreversible.

What we have experienced so far is surely small relative to what could happen in the future. We should remember that the last time global temperature was 5 C different from today, the Earth was gripped by an ice age.

So the risks are immense and can only be sensibly managed by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which will require a new low-carbon industrial revolution.

History teaches us how quickly industrial transformations can occur through waves of technological development, such as the introduction of electricity, based on innovation and discovery.

We are already seeing low-carbon technologies being deployed across the world, but further progress will require investment and facing up to the real prices of energy, including the very damaging emissions from fossil fuels.

Christian Gander makes his way through floodwater as he leaves his home on Waterworks Road in Worcester. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Unfortunately, the current pace of progress is not nearly rapid enough, with many rich industrialised countries being slow to make the transition to cleaner and more efficient forms of economic growth.

The lack of vision and political will from the leaders of many developed countries is not just harming their long-term competitiveness, but is also endangering efforts to create international co-operation and reach a new agreement that should be signed in Paris in December 2015.

Delay is dangerous. Inaction could be justified only if we could have great confidence that the risks posed by climate change are small. But that is not what 200 years of climate science is telling us. The risks are huge.

Fortunately poorer countries, such as China, are showing leadership and beginning to demonstrate to the world how to invest in low-carbon growth.

The UK must continue to set an example to other countries. The 2008 Climate Change Act, which commits the UK to cut its emissions by at least 80% by 2050, is regarded around the world as a model for how politicians can create the kind of clear policy signal to the private sector which could generate billions of pounds of investment. Weakening the Act would be a great mistake and would undermine a strong commitment made by all of the main political parties.

Squabbling and inconsistent messages from ministers, as well as uncertainty about the policies of possible future governments, are already eroding the confidence of businesses. Government-induced policy risk has become a serious deterrent to private investment.

Instead, the UK should work with the rest of the European Union to create a unified and much better functioning energy market and power grid structure. This would also increase energy security, lower costs and reduce emissions. What better way is there to bring Europe together?

A car lies half submerged after the Thames flooded in Datchet, Berkshire. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

The government will also have to ensure the country becomes more resilient to those impacts of climate change that cannot now be avoided, including by investing greater sums in flood defences.

It should resist calls from some politicians and parts of media to fund adaptation to climate change by cutting overseas aid. It would be deeply immoral to penalise the 1.2 billion people around the world who live in extreme poverty.

In fact, the UK should be increasing aid to poor countries to help them develop economically in a climate that is becoming more hostile largely because of past emissions by rich countries.

A much more sensible way to raise money would be to implement a strong price on greenhouse gas pollution across the economy, which would also help to reduce emissions. It is essential that the government seizes this opportunity to foster the wave of low-carbon technological development and innovation that will drive economic growth and avoid the enormous risks of unmanaged climate change.

• Nicholas Stern is chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the LSE and president of the British Academy.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/13/storms-floods-climate-change-upon-us-lord-stern