AN ALJACOBSLADDER.COM COMPENDIUM OF KNOWLEDGE
🌡 CLIMATE CHANGE 🌡
Editor — If You Are Not A Climate Change Believer, You Will Be Soon— Two years ago, forecasters in the UK conducted an interesting thought experiment: What will our forecasts look like in 2050?
🌡 The climate crisis is pushing the Weather to the extreme all over the world, and temperatures in the northern latitudes have been particularly sensitive to these changes. So meteorologists at the UK Met Office – the official weather forecast agency for the UK – dove in to the super long-range climate models in the summer of 2020 to see what kind of temperatures they’d be forecasting in about three decades.
🌡 “Not actual weather forecast,” the Met Office’s graphics said. “Examples of plausible weather based on climate projections.” Well, on Monday and Tuesday, the “plausible” becomes reality – 28 years early. In 2020, the @metoffice produced a hypothetical weather forecast for 23 July 2050 based on UK climate projections. Today, the forecast for Tuesday is shockingly almost identical for large parts of the country.
🌡 — Dr Simon Lee (@SimonLeeWx) July 15, 2022 — Simon Lee, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University in New York, noted the striking similarity between the 2050 outlook and the forecast for early next week in the UK.“Today, the forecast for Tuesday is shockingly almost identical for large parts of the country,” Simon tweeted, adding in a later post that “what is coming on Tuesday gives an insight into the future.” In 30 years, this forecast will seem rather typical.
🌡 Temperatures are forecast to run 10 to 15 degrees warmer than normal early next week in the UK. Highs could approach 40 degrees Celsius (around 104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time – a prediction that prompted meteorologists there to issue a “red” heat warning for the first time ever. To be clear, this would be truly record-breaking heat. The country’s hottest temperature ever measured was 38.7 degrees Celsius at the Cambridge Botanic Garden in 2019. It’s also clearly a sign of how rapidly the climate crisis is altering our weather.
🌡 “We hoped we wouldn’t get to this situation,” the Met Office’s climate attribution scientist Nikos Christidis said in a statement. “Climate change has already influenced the likelihood of temperature extremes in the UK. The chances of seeing 40°C days in the UK could be as much as 10 times more likely in the current climate than under a natural climate unaffected by human influence.” The chance of exceeding 40 degrees is “increasing rapidly,” Christidis said.
🌡 This is about more than a few uncomfortable days. Extreme heat is among the most deadly weather events – we just don’t tend to see it happening in the moment, when heat stroke and death are attributed to underlying conditions like heart illness or respiratory disease. And recent reports would suggest no more than 5% of UK homes have air conditioning to help keep residents cool.
🌡 We saw a shockingly similar situation play out in the United States just last summer, when the Pacific Northwest was plagued with extreme heat for days. Hundreds of people died in that heatwave. Officials in British Columbia noted that more than 800 “excess deaths” occurred during the heat – deaths that were unexpected and far from the norm for that time of year.
🌡 Unlike flooding or wildfires destroying a town, the sense of urgency around a deadly heat wave is not so dramatic, said Kristie Ebi, a climate and health researcher at the University of Washington, underscoring that heat is a “silent killer.” “When it’s hot outside, it’s just plain hot outside — and so it’s a relatively silent killer,” Ebi previously told CNN. “People are generally unaware and don’t think about the risks associated with these high temperatures.”
🌡 She also said that it’s important to understand that the climate is not like what it was even just a few years ago. The climate crisis is already affecting our lives today, and it will continue to hit the most vulnerable. “We all look forward to the summer as we enjoy the warmer temperatures, but there are people who are at risk at higher temperatures,” she said. “As the climate continues to change or higher temperatures get higher than what we experienced when we were younger, people need to pay more attention, particularly to those around you.”
The World's Rivers Are Drying Up From Extreme Weather —
(💦 To be stuck "up a river without a paddle" is an expression for a sticky situation you just can't get out of. But if that river happens to be in the northern hemisphere this summer, it's likely the paddle won't be helpful, anyway.
💦A painful lack of rain and relentless heat waves are drying up rivers in the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Many are shrinking in length and breadth. Patches of riverbed poking out above the water are a common sight. Some rivers are so desiccated, they have become virtually impassable.
💦The human-caused climate crisis is fueling extreme weather across the globe, which isn't just impacting rivers, but also the people who rely on them. Most people on the planet depend on rivers in some way, whether for drinking water, to irrigate food, for energy or to ship goods.
💦 The Colorado River is drying up at its banks and thinning out, as a historic drought in the US West shows little sign of abating. The river is crucially maintained by two of the country's largest reservoirs, and to safeguard the river basin, the government has implemented mandatory water cuts and asked states to come up with additional action plans.
Shrinking Lake Mead Reveals Bodies And Boats —
💦 Satellite images of the Overton Arm, the northernmost portion of Lake Mead, from July 2000, July 2021 and July 2022. The light-colored fringes along the shorelines are areas that were formerly under water when the reservoir was closer to capacity. They’re often called bathtub rings. Image via NASA Earth Observatory.
💦 Despite last week’s monsoon rains and flooding in Las Vegas, water levels in Lake Mead – 30 miles (about 50 km) to the east – remain low. They’re at their lowest since the completion of Hoover Dam in the 1930s, which stopped the flow of the Colorado River and created this lake in the desert in the U.S. Southwest.
💦 It was considered a magnificent achievement at the time. But, as of July 31, 2022, Lake Mead’s water level has dropped to 1,040.92 feet (317.3 meters), continuing a 22-year downward trend.
The retreating lake is revealing things hidden underwater for decades. People are finding lots of trash, and also boats, including a World War II-era craft … and human bodies.What’s more, Lake Mead, on the Colorado River at the Nevada-Arizona border, is the largest reservoir in the U.S. The reservoir supplies water to roughly 25 million people across seven states, tribal lands and northern Mexico.
💦 From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production, to rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. Without drastic action today, adapting to these impacts in the future will be more difficult and costly, or worse impossible to control.
Icebergs Rule And Raise — Global Warming —
🧊 An enormous iceberg has calved from the western side of the Ronne Ice Shelf, lying in the Weddell Sea, in Antarctica. The iceberg, dubbed A-76, measures around 4320 sq km in size – currently making it the largest berg in the world. Spotted in recent images captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission, the iceberg is around 170 km in length and 25 km wide, and is slightly larger than the Spanish island of Majorca.
🧊 The enormity of the berg makes it the largest in the world, snatching first place from the A-23A iceberg (approximately 3880 sq km in size) which is also located in the Weddell Sea. In comparison, the A-74 iceberg that broke off the Brunt Ice Shelf in February earlier this year, was only 1270 sq km.
🧊 The iceberg was spotted by the British Antarctic Survey and confirmed from the US National Ice Center using Copernicus Sentinel-1 imagery. The Sentinel-1 mission consists of two polar-orbiting satellites that rely on C-band synthetic aperture radar imaging, returning data regardless of whether it is day or night, allowing us year-round viewing of remote regions like Antarctica.
🧊 Icebergs are traditionally named from the Antarctic quadrant in which they were originally sighted, then a sequential number, then, if the iceberg breaks, a sequential letter.
🧊 This finger-shaped block of ice is around 170 kilometers (105 miles) long and around 25 kilometers (15 miles) wide. The 4,320 square kilometers (1,660 square miles) iceberg has been named A-76, after the Antarctic “A” quadrant where it broke off. It is currently the largest iceberg in the world.
Iceberg A-76 fully detached in the next days, becoming a free-floating mass of ice. The image below shows the iceberg fully detached from the ice shelf, and floating into the Weddell Sea. Also added is the size comparison to the island of Majorca (Mallorca), which is actually smaller in area than the iceberg A-76.Because the ice shelf that A-76 calved from was already floating on water, this event will not directly impact the global sea levels. The main problem for global sea-level rise is the ice that breaks off the continental ice sheet, as it moves from the land into the oceans, displacing a certain volume of water.
🧊 Global warming can be difficult to properly visualize. If you’re not directly threatened by rising sea levels, suffering water shortages or ravaged by wildfires, how do you know it’s really happening? It can all seem a little abstract.
That’s why projects like Climate Central are so essential. This website creates maps that show which parts of the world could find themselves underwater due to rising sea levels.
🧊 So as the planet keeps getting warmer – and pollution continues unabated – which cities around the globe could find themselves underwater as early as 2030? To find out, we looked at Climate Central’s latest maps, which are based on the IPCC’s 2021 report – in other words, some of the most reliable climate-change data out there.
Of course, there are plenty of variables at play, but what we’re looking at here is what might happen if pollution continues on its current trajectory. These maps show future sea levels (in red), but don’t show what could happen during flooding or other extreme weather events.
🧊 A lot can change between now and 2030. We could build flood defences, adapt our cities and – ideally, if the COP26 talks go to plan – take dramatic action to halt global warming. But if none of that happens, here are the potential consequences: nine cities that could find themselves entirely (or in large part) underwater within a decade.
The Human Fingerprint on Greenhouse Gases — Greenhouse gases occur naturally and are essential to the survival of humans and millions of other living things, by keeping some of the sun’s warmth from reflecting back into space and making Earth livable. But after more than a century and a half of industrialization, deforestation, and large scale agriculture, quantities of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have risen to record levels not seen in three million years. As populations, economies and standards of living grow, so does the cumulative level of greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions.
🧤 There are some basic well-established scientific links causing the Global Warming —
🧤 The concentration of GHGs in the earth’s atmosphere is directly linked to the average global temperature —
🧤 It has been rising steadily, and mean global temperatures along with it, since the Industrial Revolution —
🧤 The most abundant GHG, accounting for about two-thirds of GHGs, carbon dioxide (CO2), is largely the product of burning fossil fuels.
🧤 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and United Nations Environment to provide an objective source of scientific information. In 2013 the IPCC provided more clarity about the role of human activities in climate change when it released its Fifth Assessment Report. It is categorical in its conclusion: climate change is real and human activities are the main cause.
🧤 The report provides a comprehensive assessment of sea level rise, and its causes, over the past few decades. It also estimates cumulative CO2 emissions since pre-industrial times and provides a CO2 budget for future emissions to limit warming to less than 2°C. About half of this maximum amount was already emitted by 2011. The report found that:
🧤 From 1880 to 2012, the average global temperature increased by 0.85°C.
🧤 Oceans have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished and the sea level has risen. From 1901 to 2010, the global average sea level rose by 19 cm as oceans expanded due to warming and ice melted. The sea ice extent in the Arctic has shrunk in every successive decade since 1979, with 1.07 × 106 km² of ice loss per decade.
🧤 Given current concentrations and ongoing emissions of greenhouse gases, it is likely that by the end of this century global mean temperature will continue to rise above the pre-industrial level. The world’s oceans will warm and ice melt will continue. Average sea level rise is predicted to be 24–30 cm by 2065 and 40–63 cm by 2100 relative to the reference period of 1986–2005. Most aspects of climate change will persist for many centuries, even if emissions are stopped.
🧤 There is alarming evidence that important tipping points, leading to irreversible changes in major ecosystems and the planetary climate system, may already have been reached or passed. Ecosystems as diverse as the Amazon rainforest and the Arctic tundra, may be approaching thresholds of dramatic change through warming and drying. Mountain glaciers are in alarming retreat and the downstream effects of reduced water supply in the driest months will have repercussions that transcend generations.
🔥 Global Warming of 1.5°C — In October 2018 the IPCC issued a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C, finding that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society. With clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems, the report found that limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society. While previous estimates focused on estimating the damage if average temperatures were to rise by 2°C, this report shows that many of the adverse impacts of climate change will come at the 1.5°C mark.
🔥 The report also highlights a number of climate change impacts that could be avoided by limiting global warming to 1.5ºC compared to 2ºC, or more. For instance, by 2100, global sea level rise would be 10 cm lower with global warming of 1.5°C compared with 2°C. The likelihood of an Arctic Ocean free of sea ice in summer would be once per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared with at least once per decade with 2°C. Coral reefs would decline by 70-90 percent with global warming of 1.5°C, whereas virtually all (> 99 percent) would be lost with 2ºC.
🔥 The report finds that limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require “rapid and far-reaching” transitions in land, energy, industry, buildings, transport, and cities. Global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) would need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching ‘net zero’ around 2050. This means that any remaining emissions would need to be balanced by removing CO2 from the air.
United Nations Legal Instruments
🌎 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — The UN family is at the forefront of the effort to save our planet. In 1992, its “Earth Summit” produced the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as a first step in addressing the climate change problem. Today, it has near-universal membership. The 197 countries that have ratified the Convention are Parties to the Convention. The ultimate aim of the Convention is to prevent “dangerous” human interference with the climate system.
🌎 Kyoto Protocol — By 1995, countries launched negotiations to strengthen the global response to climate change, and, two years later, adopted the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol legally binds developed country Parties to emission reduction targets. The Protocol’s first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. The second commitment period began on 1 January 2013 and ended in 2020. There are now 197 Parties to the Convention and 192 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol.
🌎 Paris Agreement — At the 21st Conference of the Parties in Paris in 2015, Parties to the UNFCCC reached a landmark agreement to combat climate change and to accelerate and intensify the actions and investments needed for a sustainable low carbon future. The Paris Agreement builds upon the Convention and – for the first time – brings all nations into a common cause to undertake ambitious efforts to combat climate change and adapt to its effects, with enhanced support to assist developing countries to do so. As such, it charts a new course in the global climate effort.
The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping the global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
On Earth Day, 22 April 2016, 175 world leaders signed the Paris Agreement at United Nations Headquarters in New York. This was by far the largest number of countries ever to sign an international agreement on a single day. There are now 186 countries that have ratified the Paris Agreement.
🌎 2019 Climate Action Summit — On 23 September 2019, Secretary-General António Guterres convened a Climate Summit to bring world leaders of governments, the private sector and civil society together to support the multilateral process and to increase and accelerate climate action and ambition. He named Luis Alfonso de Alba, a former Mexican diplomat, as his Special Envoy to lead preparations. The Summit focused on key sectors where action can make the most difference—heavy industry, nature-based solutions, cities, energy, resilience, and climate finance. World leaders reported on what they are doing, and what more they intend to do when they convene in 2020 for the UN climate conference, where commitments will be renewed and may be increased. In closing the Climate Action Summit, the Secretary-General said “You have delivered a boost in momentum, cooperation and ambition. But we have a long way to go.”
“We need more concrete plans, more ambition from more countries and more businesses. We need all financial institutions, public and private, to choose, once and for all, the green economy.”
🌎 Nobel Peace Prize — In 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to former United States Vice-President Al Gore and the IPCC "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.”