KREUZADER (Posts tagged anthropogenic climate change)

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Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels An unexpected surge in global atmospheric methane is threatening to erase the anticipated gains of the Paris Climate Agreement. This past April NOAA posted preliminary data documenting an historic leap in the...

Unexpected Surge in Global Methane Levels

An unexpected surge in global atmospheric methane is threatening to erase the anticipated gains of the Paris Climate Agreement.  This past April NOAA posted preliminary data documenting an historic leap in the global level of atmospheric methane in 2018, underscoring a recent wave of science and data reporting that previously stable global methane levels have unexpectedly surged in recent years.

The scientific community recently responded to the surge into two high profile publications by calling for a reduction in methane emissions from the natural gas system, framing it as the most practical response to the global increase.

Last year global methane reached a new historic high, marking the second highest year-over-year jump recorded over the last 20 years.  More importantly, the jump in 2018 extended an unanticipated multi-year resurgence of growth in global methane levels that has generated enormous concern in the science community. Scientists report that the new and unexpected methane math threatens to eliminate the anticipated gains of the Paris Climate Agreement, an agreement built upon models that assumed stable methane.

Source: climatenexus.org
global warming anthropogenic climate change
An Australian rodent has become the first climate change mammal extinction “For thousands of years, generations of Melomys rubicola lived and bred on a sandy bank in the Torres Strait known as Bramble Cay. Some time between 2009 and 2014 the last of...

An Australian rodent has become the first climate change mammal extinction

For thousands of years, generations of Melomys rubicola lived and bred on a sandy bank in the Torres Strait known as Bramble Cay. Some time between 2009 and 2014 the last of this species died; probably drowned in a storm surge.

Unlike koalas or whales, the small rodent was never cute enough to rate much of a conservation effort. It’s only with its extinction - noted for the first time by the Federal Government, in a press release from Environment Minister Melissa Price - that it’s attracted interest from beyond the circle of biologists and conservationists that warned of its demise.

This was probably the first recorded mammal species-loss because of human-induced climate change, according to the Queensland Government, which reported on the extinction in 2016.

Source: abc.net.au
anthropogenic climate change
Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web “ Arthropods, invertebrates including insects that have external skeletons, are declining at an alarming rate. While the tropics harbor the majority of arthropod...

Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web

Arthropods, invertebrates including insects that have external skeletons, are declining at an alarming rate. While the tropics harbor the majority of arthropod species, little is known about trends in their abundance. We compared arthropod biomass in Puerto Rico’s Luquillo rainforest with data taken during the 1970s and found that biomass had fallen 10 to 60 times. Our analyses revealed synchronous declines in the lizards, frogs, and birds that eat arthropods. Over the past 30 years, forest temperatures have risen 2.0 °C, and our study indicates that climate warming is the driving force behind the collapse of the forest’s food web. If supported by further research, the impact of climate change on tropical ecosystems may be much greater than currently anticipated.

Source: pnas.org
climate change anthropogenic climate change global warming
How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet “As journalists at InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times have revealed since 2015, Exxon, the world’s largest oil company, understood that its product was contributing to climate change a decade...

How Extreme Weather Is Shrinking the Planet

As journalists at InsideClimate News and the Los Angeles Times have revealed since 2015, Exxon, the world’s largest oil company, understood that its product was contributing to climate change a decade before Hansen testified. In July, 1977, James F. Black, one of Exxon’s senior scientists, addressed many of the company’s top leaders in New York, explaining the earliest research on the greenhouse effect. “There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon-dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels,” he said, according to a written version of the speech which was later recorded, and which was obtained by InsideClimate News. In 1978, speaking to the company’s executives, Black estimated that a doubling of the carbon-dioxide concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by between two and three degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit), and as much as ten degrees Celsius (eighteen degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles.

Exxon spent millions of dollars researching the problem. It outfitted an oil tanker, the Esso Atlantic, with CO2 detectors to measure how fast the oceans could absorb excess carbon, and hired mathematicians to build sophisticated climate models. By 1982, they had concluded that even the company’s earlier estimates were probably too low. In a private corporate primer, they wrote that heading off global warming and “potentially catastrophic events” would “require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.”

An investigation by the L.A. Times revealed that Exxon executives took these warnings seriously. Ken Croasdale, a senior researcher for the company’s Canadian subsidiary, led a team that investigated the positive and negative effects of warming on Exxon’s Arctic operations. In 1991, he found that greenhouse gases were rising due to the burning of fossil fuels. “Nobody disputes this fact,” he said. The following year, he wrote that “global warming can only help lower exploration and development costs” in the Beaufort Sea. Drilling season in the Arctic, he correctly predicted, would increase from two months to as many as five months.

Source: newyorker.com
anthropogenic climate change climate change global warming
Federal Climate Report Predicts At Least 3 Degrees Of Warming By 2100 “The United States already warmed on average 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century and will warm at least 3 more degrees by 2100 unless fossil fuel use is dramatically...

Federal Climate Report Predicts At Least 3 Degrees Of Warming By 2100

The United States already warmed on average 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century and will warm at least 3 more degrees by 2100 unless fossil fuel use is dramatically curtailed, scientists from more than a dozen federal agencies concluded in their latest in-depth assessment.

The 13-agency consensus, authored by more than 300 researchers, found in the second volume of the Fourth National Climate Assessment makes it clear the world is barreling toward catastrophic ― perhaps irreversible ― climate change. The report concluded that warming “could increase by 9°F (5°C) or more by the end of this century” without significant emissions reductions.

Source: The Huffington Post
anthropogenic climate change climate change global warming
Huge risk if global warming exceeds 1.5C, warns landmark UN report “The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly...

Huge risk if global warming exceeds 1.5C, warns landmark UN report

The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which they say is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.

Source: theguardian.com
global warming anthropogenic climate change climate change
Hurricane Harvey was fueled by record heat in the Gulf of Mexico “When Harvey entered the Gulf of Mexico, it encountered record ocean heat energy (top graph in the image below). That wasn’t just random chance—average sea surface temperatures have...

Hurricane Harvey was fueled by record heat in the Gulf of Mexico

When Harvey entered the Gulf of Mexico, it encountered record ocean heat energy (top graph in the image below). That wasn’t just random chance—average sea surface temperatures have increased about 0.6°C since 1960 (lower graph below). Global warming obviously includes warming seawater, which means greater ocean heat energy.

As Hurricane Harvey grew strong feeding on that energy, it left water about 1° to 2°C cooler in its wake (but still above the 26°C hurricane threshold). Doing the math, the researchers estimate this represents about 590 billion gigajoules of heat energy lost by the upper ocean. 

Source: Ars Technica
tropical cyclone hurricane weather global warming anthropogenic climate change
US government climate report: Climate change is real and our fault“Information about the science and consequences of climate change has been removed from a number of federal agency websites since the Trump administration took over. But some agencies...

US government climate report: Climate change is real and our fault

Information about the science and consequences of climate change has been removed from a number of federal agency websites since the Trump administration took over. But some agencies like NASA seem to have continued their work unhindered. And today saw the release of the fourth National Climate Assessment—an official summary of the current state of knowledge about climate change.

The heavily peer-reviewed report, following the last edition in 2014, is coordinated by NOAA, NASA, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the US Global Change Research Program. A group of US climate scientists volunteered to write the report, which gathers together the most recent peer-reviewed research into digestible conclusions about the causes and impacts of climate change.

[…]

The topline conclusion is obviously the degree to which observed global warming is human-caused, and the report pulls no punches: “Many lines of evidence demonstrate that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. Over the last century, there are no convincing alternative explanations supported by the extent of the observational evidence.”

Specifically, the report quantifies the amount of human-caused warming in the period from 1951 to 2010: between 0.6-0.8 degrees Celsius (1.1-1.4 degrees Fahrenheit). Its best estimate of the total temperature change for that same time period is right within that range, at 0.65 degrees Celsius (1.2 degrees Fahrenheit). (Note that the warming influence of human activities can be larger than the actual change if natural factors would have caused cooling.)

Source: Ars Technica
anthropogenic climate change climate change global warming
yay, we did it: Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere spiked in 2016, setting a new, 800,000-year record“Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased a record amount from 2015 to 2016, leaving the air laden with a concentration of the potent greenhouse gas...

yay, we did it:

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere spiked in 2016, setting a new, 800,000-year record

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased a record amount from 2015 to 2016, leaving the air laden with a concentration of the potent greenhouse gas not seen for at least the last 800,000 years, the period for which we have direct measurements from ice cores. The increase essentially guarantees that in the absence of rapid and dramatic cuts to emissions, catastrophic temperature increases “well above” those the Paris agreement sought to avoid will become a reality by end of the century, according to Petteri Taalas, the head of the World Meteorological Organization.

According to a report released by the international climate observing body on Monday (Oct 30), the concentration of CO2 was at 403.3 parts per million as of 2016, up from 400 parts per million a year earlier. That 3.3 ppm rise is 50% more than the average rate over the past decade. Over the last 70 years, the rate of increase of carbon in the atmosphere has been “nearly 100 times larger than at the end of the last ice age,” the last time the Earth transitioned to a much warmer world, the WMO writes. As far as the global scientific community can tell, “such abrupt changes in the atmospheric levels of CO2 have never before been seen.”

Source: qz.com
carbon dioxide global warming climate change anthropogenic climate change
We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2“On Tuesday, the Mauna Loa Observatory recorded its first-ever carbon dioxide reading in excess of 410 parts per million (it was 410.28 ppm in case you want the full deal). Carbon dioxide hasn’t reached...

We Just Breached the 410 PPM Threshold for CO2

On Tuesday, the Mauna Loa Observatory recorded its first-ever carbon dioxide reading in excess of 410 parts per million (it was 410.28 ppm in case you want the full deal). Carbon dioxide hasn’t reached that height in millions of years. It’s a new atmosphere that humanity will have to contend with, one that’s trapping more heat and causing the climate to change at a quickening rate.

In what’s become a spring tradition like Passover and Easter, carbon dioxide has set a record high each year since measurements began. It stood at 280 ppm when record keeping began at Mauna Loa in 1958. In 2013, it passed 400 ppm. Just four years later, the 400 ppm mark is no longer a novelty. It’s the norm.

“Its pretty depressing that it’s only a couple of years since the 400 ppm milestone was toppled,” Gavin Foster, a paleoclimate researcher at the University of Southampton told Climate Central last month. “These milestones are just numbers, but they give us an opportunity to pause and take stock and act as useful yard sticks for comparisons to the geological record.”

Source: scientificamerican.com
anthropogenic climate change climate change climate global warming
not explicitly stated, but the bookmark nomination tools here can help preserve federal data (like climate change-related data) in the event the trump administration scrubs it or removes access e.g., if you know of sites/pages you use as a...

not explicitly stated, but the bookmark nomination tools here can help preserve federal data (like climate change-related data) in the event the trump administration scrubs it or removes access

e.g., if you know of sites/pages you use as a researcher, this is something you can do Right Now

more info also at the PPEH Lab’s #DATAREFUGE site

Source: digital2.library.unt.edu
climate change anthropogenic climate change trump global warming