ONE TOWN SQUARE: at the intersection of peak oil, climate change, and land use

Arctic temperatures set a new record high in 2011, beating the record set just the previous year in 2010.

Surface temperature anomaly for the region extending from 64oN to 90oN, from 1880 through 2011, in degrees Centigrade above or below the temperature during the 1951-1980 base period.

The annual mean surface temperature (land and air) for the region north of 64oN (the Arctic Circle is at 66° 33?N) in 2011 was 2.28° C above the 1951-1980 base period, beating 2010?s record of 2.11° C.  Temperatures in the region have been rising rapidly since the late 1970s and have not dropped below the long-term mean since 1992 — nearly 20 years.

Even with the cooling effects of a strong La Niña influence and low solar activity for the past several years, 2011 was one of the 10 warmest years on record – and the warming is especially concentrated in the Arctic.

Annual global surface temperature anomalies, 2011.  The largest and most extensive
warming (indicated in shades of red) was concentrated in the Arctic.
Source: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

NASA’s James Hansen expects record-breaking global average temperatures in the next two to three years because solar activity is on the upswing and the next El Niño will increase tropical Pacific temperatures. The warmest years on record so far were 2005 and 2010, in a virtual tie.

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, when the GISS global temperature record begins. By 1960, the average concentration had risen to about 315 parts per million. Today it exceeds 390 parts per million and continues to rise at an accelerating pace.

Rising temperatures are being accompanied by a decline in Arctic ice volume.

Ice volume for December 2011 was 12,230 km³ , 47% lower than the maximum in 1979, 37% below the mean and 1.6 standard deviations from trend. PIOMAS  ice volume for September 2011 was 380 km³ lower than the previous record of 2010, but this difference is within the estimated uncertainty of PIOMAS. The same appears to be true for December 2011 as well – ice volume is lower but within the range of uncertainty – as the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center reports 2011 volume is lower than the previous record of 2010

A Russian research team surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia reports dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean.

The Independent interviewed Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed:

Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing. I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them.

In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed. We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal.

Scientists have calculated there is about 1.7 trillion tons of carbon in soils of the northern regions, about two and a half times the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Much of that carbon leaks out in the form of methane rather than carbon dioxide. Methane is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon – but 72 times as potent over 20 years.

Here’s a dramatic video of methane burning from a frozen lake in Alaska.

Some extinction events in Earth’s past have been linked to warming causing methane to be released, leading to even more warming and more methane release in a deadly feedback loop. Once the carbon locked in the permafrost begins to thaw and be released, the process could be impossible to stop.

With the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change. Semiletov’s research confirms the Siberian permafrost is already melting.

Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Are humans really stupid enough to cause their own extinction? Sadly, I’d know where I’d place my bet.

The U.N. World Meteorological Organization reports greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere reached a new high in 2010 – and the rate of increase has accelerated.

The publication WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin: The State of Greenhouse Gases in the Atmosphere Based on Global Observations through 2010 reports there was a 29% increase in radiative forcing from greenhouse gases between 1990 and 2010.

Globally averaged levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) have reached new highs, with CO2 at 389.0 ppm, CH4 at 1808 ppb, and N2O at 323.2 ppb. These values are greater than those in pre-industrial times (before 1750) by 39%, 158% and 20%, respectively.

CO2 is the single most important man-made greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, contributing about 64% of the total increase in climate forcing by greenhouse gases. CO2 emissions result from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and changes in land-use.

CH4 – contributes about 18% to the overall global increase in radiative forcing. Methane emissions result from human activities such as cattle raising, rice planting, fossil fuel exploitation and landfills. About 40% of methane emissions come from natural sources such as wetlands. After a period of temporary relative stabilization from 1999 to 2006, atmospheric methane has again been rising, likely because of the thawing of the methane-rich northern permafrost and increased emissions from tropical wetlands.

N2O contributes about 6% to the overall global increase in radiative forcing. N2O emissions result from the use of nitrogen-containing fertilizers, including manure, which has profoundly affected the global nitrogen cycle. Over a 100 year period, its impact on climate is 298 times greater than equal emissions of carbon dioxide.

Halocarbons together account for about 12% of the increase in radiative forcing. Some halocarbons such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), previously used as refrigerants, as propellants in spray cans and as solvents, are decreasing slowly as a result of international action to preserve the Earth’s protective ozone layer. However, concentrations of other gases such as HCFCs and HFCs, which have been substituted for CFCs because they are less damaging to the ozone layer, are increasing rapidly. HCFCs and HFCs are very potent greenhouse gases and last much longer in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

While greenhouse gases continue to rise at an increasing rate, the leaders of Earth’s “greatest” nations continue to fiddle. After the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 ended in a debacle, governments pledged to try to sign a new treaty in 2012, when the current provisions of the Kyoto protocol expire. Fiona Harvey at the U.K. Guardian reports that before critical climate talks even begin next week, most of the world’s leading economies are privately admitting that no new global climate agreement will be reached before 2016 at the earliest – and that even if it were negotiated by then, they would stipulate it could not come into force until 2020.

2020 is too late if catastrophic climate change is to be averted. Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA) and one of the world’s foremost authorities on climate economics, warns:

If we do not have an international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door to holding temperatures below 2 ° C will be closed forever.

While global leaders fiddle, Earth is already beginning to burn (and drown). In an advance draft of the Summary for Policymakers of the upcoming report Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX, the IPCC observes there has been an increase in temperature extremes, extreme precipitation events, and economic losses from extreme weather- and climate-related disasters.

While noting the effects of climate change are already being felt, the IPCC is pulling its punches. Joseph Romm at Climate Progress fumes:

The thing to remember about IPCC reports is that pretty much everyone involved has to sign off on every word, so it is inevitably a least common denominator document. The actual scientific literature from 2011 is far more useful than this report.

Romm in his post discusses and provides links to many recent studies showing the systemic influence of global warming on climate events. Climate change is already here – and will keep getting worse.

Massive die-offs of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest show ocean acidification from an excess of CO2 emissions has already begun.

In Netarts Bay, from 2006 to 2008, oyster larvae began dying dramatically. Elizabeth Grossman, in an article in Yale Environment 360, quotes Netarts Bay hatchery owner Mark Wiegard:

Historically we’ve had larvae mortalities [usually related to bacteria] . . . My wife sent a few samples in and Hales [Burke Hales, a biogeochemist and ocean ecologist at Oregon State University] said someone had screwed up the samples because the [dissolved CO2 gas] level was so ridiculously high.

Taylor Shellfish Hatchery in Washington, the country’s largest producer of farmed shellfish and one of the largest oyster producers, has also reported dramatic losses.  Hood Canal has some of the Pacific Northwest’s highest levels of ocean acidification. Taylor’s hatchery there experienced the loss of about three-quarters of its oyster larvae, losses which are now being mitigated by buffering the high acidity.

Wild oyster beds in the Pacific Northwest are suffering, too.  Wild oysters in Willapa Bay,  Puget Sound, and off the east coast of Vancouver Island have seen reproductive failure because acidic waters have prevented oyster larvae from forming shells. Acidic water sometimes kills oyster larvae outright, so that they fail to survive past the egg stage. At other times the eggs hatch; but the larvae, stressed as they try to forms their first shells, fail after a week or two.

The water now washing ashore in Oregon and Washington actually absorbed its CO2 30 to 50 years ago. Oceans absorb about 50% of the CO2 released by burning fossil fuels. Since then, emissions have been rising even more dramatically.

Ocean acidity has increased approximately 30% since the Industrial Revolution and is on track to be 150% more acidic by the end of the century than it has been for 20 million years. Ocean acidification depletes seawater of the compounds that organisms need to build shells and skeletons, impairing the ability of corals, crabs, sea stars, sea urchins, plankton and other marine creatures to build the shells they need to survive. Ocean acidification could destroy all of the globe’s coral reefs by 2050 and threatens the entire marine ecosystem.

2011 has seen new record lows established for Arctic average sea ice extent and area; sea ice volume; and for global sea ice area.

Neven at Arctic Sea Ice Blog reports that the 12 month rolling average for Arctic sea ice extent set a new record in October 2011 at 10.66 million km². The previous record of 10.67 million km² had been set in October 2007.

The record for Arctic sea ice area has also been broken. The October 2007 was again the previous record, standing at 8.39 million km². Annual average Sea Ice Area dropped to 8.34 million km² for the 12-month period ending in October 2011.

Sea ice volumes have been decreasing far more quickly. The previous record value from PIOMAS was 15,075 km³, set in the 12-month period ending in January 2008, a record that held for just 29 months. The 12-month period ending in September 2011 set a new record, averaging 13,140 km³.

Global sea ice area (Arctic and Antarctic combined, as calculated at Cryosphere Today) has also reached its lowest maximum on record, as seen in this graph posted here.

It’s hard to see the new record in the graph above, but Neven posts this chart showing the numbers.

Earth’s cryosphere continues to wither under the assault from global warming.

Bad news: a new study finds that the prospects for avoiding dangerous global warming are bleak, indeed.

In the study, titled Emission pathways consistent with a 2°C global temperature limit,  the scientists reanalyzed a large set of previously published emission scenarios based on integrated assessment models. They found that in the set of scenarios with a ‘likely’ (greater than 66%) chance of staying below 2°C, emissions peak between 2010 and 2020 and fall to a median level of 44 Gt of CO₂ equivalent in 2020 (compared with estimated median emissions across the scenario set of 48 Gt of CO₂ equivalent in 2010).

Current climate models show if the increase in average global temperatures is to be kept below 2°C (3.6°F), emissions must not only peak by 2020, emissions must fall by almost 10% by 2020  – and then continue to fall rapidly to well under half of current emissions by 2050.

Climate scientist Neil Edwards commented on the study’s findings:

The alarming thing is very few scenarios give the kind of future we want.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) recently announced global CO₂ emissions decreased for the first time since 1990, due to the 2008-2009 economic crisis – but warned, don’t expect a trend. A large rebound is anticipated in 2010. (Note: a report published by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency found that global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions increased by more than 5% in 2010, reaching an all-time high.)

The IEA’s findings are contained in a free document which contains highlights from CO₂ Emissions from Fuel Combustion 2011, an IEA statistics publication which will be released in November 2011. The document, which contains all the latest information on the level and growth of CO₂ emissions, has been released to inform the upcoming UN climate negotiations in Durban. Key findings include:

1. Two-thirds of global emissions for 2009 originated from just ten countries, with the shares of China and the United States far surpassing those of all others (combined, these two countries alone produced 41% of the world’s CO₂ emissions).
2. Between 1990 and 2009, CO₂ emissions from the combustion of coal grew from 40% to 43% and natural gas from 18 to 20%, while CO₂ emissions from oil fell from 42% to 37%.
3. Two sectors – electricity and heat generation and transport – produced nearly two-thirds of global CO₂ emissions in 2009, up from 58% in 1990.

In their study, the climate scientists found only three of the 193 scenarios examined would be very likely to keep the warming below the danger level – and all of those require heavy use of energy systems that actually remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. That would require, for example, both creating biofuels and storing the carbon dioxide from their combustion in the ground. Edwards put it this way:

What we need is at the cutting edge. We need to be as innovative as we can be in every way.

In the statement quoted above, Edwards is assuming that the objective is to preserve the energy-intensive economic growth paradigm. But he paradigm is the problem. Every day it is becoming increasingly clear that cutting edge technology and innovation are not the answer.

One example: many Oregonians across the political spectrum, including Governor John Kitzhaber, have promoted forest biomass as a energy source, thinking woody debris from thinning, brush clearing and removing dead trees could could help the state meet its renewable energy goals while at the same time restoring forest health and providing jobs in rural communities. But not so fast, say OSU researchers: managing forests for biofuel production will increase carbon dioxide emissions from the forests by at least 14%. The OSU press release quotes co-author Beverly Law:

Until now there have been a lot of misconceptions about impacts of forest thinning, fire prevention and biofuels production as it relates to carbon emissions from forests. If our ultimate goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, producing bioenergy from forests will be counterproductive. Some of these forest management practices may also have negative impacts on soils, biodiversity and habitat. These issues have not been thought out very fully.

Looking to technology and innovation to enable humans to continue to pursue the economic growth that is consuming the very ecosystems that sustain us is just the denial of an addict. What is necessary is that we acceptance: growth is destructive and must be reversed. We must welcome and embrace the collapse of our current economic system, and learn to live within an economic system that conserves rather than consumes the larger systems of which it is a part.

Greenland ice mass anomaly – deviation from the average ice mass over the 2002 to 2010 period.

Two studies published in Nature bolster the conclusion that the consequences of global warming have already begun to arrive. Human-caused climate change is already devastating human settlements and economies. The research directly links rising greenhouse-gas levels with the growing intensity of rain and snow in the Northern Hemisphere.

The article Human contribution to more-intense precipitation extremes first explains:

Given that atmospheric water-holding capacity is expected to increase roughly exponentially with temperature—and that atmospheric water content is increasing in accord with this theoretical expectation—it has been suggested that human-influenced global warming may be partly responsible for increases in heavy precipitation.

The study then finds:

[H]uman-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas. * * * Changes in extreme precipitation projected by models, and thus the impacts of future changes in extreme precipitation, may be underestimated because models seem to underestimate the observed increase in heavy precipitation with warming.

The study Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000 sets out the problem – it’s difficult to tie a specific weather event to global warming:

Interest in attributing the risk of damaging weather-related events to anthropogenic climate change is increasing. Yet climate models used to study the attribution problem typically do not resolve the weather systems associated with damaging events such as the UK floods of October and November 2000. Occurring during the wettest autumn in England and Wales since records began in 1766, these floods damaged nearly 10,000 properties across that region, disrupted services severely, and caused insured losses estimated at £1.3 billion. Although the flooding was deemed a ‘wake-up call’ to the impacts of climate change at the time, such claims are typically supported only by general thermodynamic arguments that suggest increased extreme precipitation under global warming, but fail to account fully for the complex hydrometeorology associated with flooding.

The study’s authors explain how they approached a solution:

Here we present a multi-step, physically based ‘probabilistic event attribution’ framework showing that it is very likely that global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions substantially increased the risk of flood occurrence in England and Wales in autumn 2000. Using publicly volunteered distributed computing, we generate several thousand seasonal-forecast-resolution climate model simulations of autumn 2000 weather, both under realistic conditions, and under conditions as they might have been had these greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting large-scale warming never occurred. Results are fed into a precipitation-runoff model that is used to simulate severe daily river runoff events in England and Wales (proxy indicators of flood events).

They found that the signature of global warming on weather events is undeniable:

The precise magnitude of the anthropogenic contribution remains uncertain, but in nine out of ten cases our model results indicate that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.

The first paper covers climate trends from 1951 to 1999 and therefore does not include any analysis of weather events over the last decade – the warmest decade on record. Last year’s extreme precipitation events included catastrophic floods in Pakistan, China and Australia as well as, in the United States, Tennessee, Arkansas and California.

One- to two-thirds of Earth’s permafrost will disappear by 2200, unleashing vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere.

That’s the frightening conclusion of a new study by NOAA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) published in the journal Tellus, titled Amount and timing of permafrost carbon release in response to climate warming.

NSIDC scientist Kevin Schaefer comments in the NSIDC press release:

The amount of carbon released is equivalent to half the amount of carbon that has been released into the atmosphere since the dawn of the industrial age. That is a lot of carbon.

If we want to hit a target carbon concentration, then we have to reduce fossil fuel emissions that much lower than previously calculated to account for this additional carbon from the permafrost. Otherwise we will end up with a warmer Earth than we want.

The study’s authors estimate an extra 190 plus or minus 64 gigatons of carbon will enter the atmosphere by 2200—about one-fifth the total amount of carbon currently in the atmosphere. But, they warn, their estimates are certainly too conservative, in part because the study doesn’t incorporate the feedback from permafrost carbon release into its model.

The study itself is behind a paywall – but here’s the abstract:

The thaw and release of carbon currently frozen in permafrost will increase atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and amplify surface warming to initiate a positive permafrost carbon feedback (PCF) on climate. We use surface weather from three global climate models based on the moderate warming, A1B Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emissions scenario and the SiBCASA land surface model to estimate the strength and timing of the PCF and associated uncertainty. By 2200, we predict a 29–59% decrease in permafrost area and a 53–97 cm increase in active layer thickness. By 2200, the PCF strength in terms of cumulative permafrost carbon flux to the atmosphere is 190 ± 64 Gt C. This estimate may be low because it does not account for amplified surface warming due to the PCF itself and excludes some discontinuous permafrost regions where SiBCASA did not simulate permafrost. We predict that the PCF will change the arctic from a carbon sink to a source after the mid-2020s and is strong enough to cancel 42–88% of the total global land sink. The thaw and decay of permafrost carbon is irreversible and accounting for the PCF will require larger reductions in fossil fuel emissions to reach a target atmospheric CO₂ concentration.

Joseph Romm at Climate Progress explains one reason why the study’s estimate is too conservative:

The permafrost permamelt contains a staggering “1.5 trillion tons of frozen carbon, about twice as much carbon as contained in the atmosphere, much of which would be released as methane.  Methane is 25 times as potent a heat-trapping gas as CO2 over a 100 year time horizon, but 72 times as potent over 20 years!  One of the most conservative assumptions the study made, the lead author Dr. Kevin Schaefer confirmed in an email, is that all of the carbon would be released as CO2 and none as methane.

Despite the immanent danger to human life and global systems posed by global warming, humans continue their frantic quest for ever more fossil fuels to burn: in South America and West Africa, in the Arctic which is becoming newly accessible as it thaws, from tar sands in Canada, from shales in the U.S. and the Middle East. The search for fossil fuels goes on, despite the immediate environmental devastation wrought by mountaintop removal, by the strip mining of tar sands, by the fracking which despoils aquifers – and despite the ultimate and irreparable ecological devastation that will result from destabilizing Earth’s climate.

We think heroin is addictive? The war on drugs begs to be replaced by a war on fossil fuels.

The World Meteorological Organization has confirmed NASA’s determination that 2010 equaled the record for the world’s warmest year:

The year 2010 ranked as the warmest year on record, together with 2005 and 1998, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Data received by the WMO show no statistically significant difference between global temperatures in 2010, 2005 and 1998.In 2010, global average temperature was 0.53°C (0.95°F) above the 1961-90 mean. This value is 0.01°C (0.02°F) above the nominal temperature in 2005, and 0.02°C (0.05°F) above 1998. The difference between the three years is less than the margin of uncertainty (± 0.09°C or ± 0.16°F) in comparing the data.

The ten warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.

Recent warming has been especially strong in Africa, parts of Asia, and parts of the Arctic, with many subregions registering temperatures 1.2 to 1.4°C (2.2 to 2.5°F) above the long-term average. 2010 was an exceptionally warm year over much of Africa and southern and western Asia, and in Greenland and Arctic Canada, with many parts of these regions having their hottest years on record.

Newly published research shows that 2010 set new records for the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. The melt season in some areas was up to 50 days longer than average, starting exceptionally early at the end of April and ending quite late in mid- September. Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, had the warmest spring and summer since records began in 1873.

The year 2010 was characterized by a high number of extreme weather events, including the heat wave in Russia and the devastating monsoonal floods in Pakistan. That trend has been continuing into 2011:

• Severe flooding occurred in eastern Australia in December and the first half of January, associated with the continuing strong La Niña event. The most extensive damage was in the city of Brisbane, which had its second-highest flood of the last 100 years after that of January 1974. In financial terms it is expected to be the most costly natural disaster in Australia’s history. Previous strong La Niña events have also been associated with severe and widespread flooding in eastern Australia, notably in 1974 and 1955.
• In early January floods affected more than 800 000 people in Sri Lanka according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The Philippines were also severely affected by floods and mudslides during January.
• Flash floods in the mountain areas near the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil in the second week of January resulted in more than 700 deaths, many of them in mudslides. This is one of the highest death tolls due to a single natural disaster in Brazilian history.

Arctic sea-ice cover in December 2010 was the lowest on record. Why?  One reason: it’s been extraordinarily warm in Canada:

If the weather seems whacked out now, just wait. A new paper by James Hansen and Makiko Sato titled Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change asserts climate change is likely to be the predominant scientific, economic, political and moral issue of the 21st century.

We conclude that Earth in the warmest interglacial periods was less than 1°C warmer than in the Holocene and that goals of limiting human-made warming to 2°C and CO2 to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster. Polar warmth in prior interglacials and the Pliocene does not imply that a significant cushion remains between today’s climate and dangerous warming, rather that Earth today is poised to experience strong amplifying polar feedbacks in response to moderate additional warming. Deglaciation, disintegration of ice sheets, is nonlinear, spurred by amplifying feedbacks. If warming reaches a level that forces deglaciation, the rate of sea level rise will depend on the doubling time for ice sheet mass loss. Gravity satellite data, although too brief to be conclusive, are consistent with a doubling time of 10 years or less, implying the possibility of multi-meter sea level rise this century. The emerging shift to accelerating ice sheet mass loss supports our conclusion that Earth’s temperature has returned to at least the Holocene maximum. Rapid reduction of fossil fuel emissions is required for humanity to succeed in preserving a planet resembling the one on which civilization developed.

Nothing less than the fate of humanity and of nature itself is at stake. But the chances that humanity will act decisively enough, quickly enough, are fading fast. Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency (IEA), admits the outlook is bleak:

When I look at the next 10 years, even if I take into consideration the pledges made after the Copenhagen meeting, the best case is that this could put us on a trajectory in line with 3.5 degrees Celsius.

The best case scenario would result in a 3.5 degrees Celsius rise. But as Birol goes on to point out, in most cases those targets are not backed by concrete policies. Believing the world can or will voluntarily do what’s necessary to avert catastrophic climate change is just wishful thinking.

A new analysis of the magnitude of climate change during Earth’s deep past concludes that future temperatures may eventually rise far more than projected if society continues its pace of emitting greenhouse gases.

The study, “Lessons from Earth’s Past” by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Jeffrey Kiehl, is published in this week’s issue of Science. Only this pathetically inadequate summary is available for free:

Climate models are invaluable tools for understanding Earth’s climate system. But examination of the real world also provides insights into the role of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) in determining Earth’s climate. Not only can much be learned by looking at the observational evidence from Earth’s past, but such know ledge can provide context for future climate change.

The study finds that the planet’s climate system, over long periods of times, may be at least twice as sensitive to carbon dioxide than currently projected by computer models, which have generally focused on shorter-term warming trends. This is largely because even sophisticated computer models have not yet been able to incorporate critical processes, such as the loss of ice sheets, that take place over centuries or millennia and amplify the initial warming effects of carbon dioxide.

The study warns that, if carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current rate through the end of this century, atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas will reach levels that last existed about 30 million to 100 million years ago, when global temperatures averaged about 29 degrees Fahrenheit (16 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels. At the current pace of increasing the burning of fossil fuels, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are expected to reach about 900 to 1,000 parts per million by the end of this century. That compares with current levels of about 390 parts per million, and pre-industrial levels of about 280 parts per million.

Carbon dioxide levels likely reached 900 to 1,000 parts per million about 35 million years ago. At that time, temperatures worldwide were substantially warmer than at present – especially in polar regions – even though the Sun’s energy output was slightly weaker. The tropics were about 9-18 degrees F (5-10 degrees C) above present-day temperatures. The polar regions were about 27-36 degrees F (15-20 degrees C) above present-day temperatures. Earth’s average annual temperature 30 to 40 million years ago was about 88 degrees F (31 degrees C) – substantially higher than the pre-industrial average temperature of about 59 degrees F (15 degrees C).

An optimist would point out there’s no possible way carbon dioxide emissions can continue at their current rate for another 90 years. The fossil fuels simply aren’t there, and as production of oil, coal, and gas begin to fall the economies that depend on them will first stall and then collapse long before fossil fuel reserves run out. Then again, by the time emissions fall significantly irreparable damage will most likely already have been done.

NOAA has just posted its State of the Climate Global Analysis Annual 2010. Here’s the bottom line:

For 2010, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature tied with 2005 as the warmest such period on record.

The annual global combined land and ocean surface temperature was 0.62°C (1.12°F) above the 20^th century average.

The 2010 Northern Hemisphere combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest year on record. The 2010 Southern Hemisphere combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the sixth warmest year on record.

As shown on the map above, 2010 saw an extraordinary number of extreme weather events.  Here are the top ten global weather/climate events of 2010, listed according to their overall rank, as selected by a panel of weather/climate experts.

Additional information on these and other significant 2010 climate events can be found at NCDC’s Top Ten Global Events webpage.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reports Arctic sea ice extent for December 2010 was the lowest in the satellite record for that month.

The linear rate of decline for the month is –3.5% per decade.

Low ice conditions are linked to a strong negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation, similar to the situation that dominated the winter of 2009-2010. As in November, ice extent in December 2010 was unusually low in both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the Arctic, but particularly in Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait (between southern Baffin Island and Labrador), and in Davis Strait (between Baffin Island and Greenland). Normally, these areas are completely frozen over by late November.

The low ice conditions in December occurred in conjunction with above-average air temperatures in regions where ice would normally expand at this time of year. The warm temperatures in December came from two sources: unfrozen areas of the ocean continued to release heat to the atmosphere, and an unusual circulation pattern brought warm air into the Arctic from the south. Although the air temperatures were still below freezing on average, the additional ocean and atmospheric heat slowed ice growth.

New analyses of the heat content of the waters off Western Antarctic Peninsula are now showing a clear and exponential increase in warming waters – undermining the sea ice, raising air temperatures, and melting glaciers.

Says physical oceanographer Doug Martinson of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, who has been collecting ocean water heat content data for more than 18 years at Palmer Island, on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula:

In the area I work there is the highest increase in temperatures of anywhere on Earth. Eighty-seven percent of the alpine glaciers are in retreat. Some of the Adele penguin colonies have already gone extinct.

The extraordinary warming of the Antarctic Peninsula shows up clearly on new global warming maps released by NASA:

The map shows temperature anomalies for 2000-2009 and 1970-1979 relative to a 1951-1980 baseline. The average global temperature has increased by about 0.8° Celsius (1.4° Fahrenheit) since 1880. About two-thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15-0.20°C per decade.

What the rising water heat means, according to Martinson, is that even if humanity got organized and stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, there is already too much heat in the oceans to stop a lot of impacts – like the melting of a huge amount of Antarctic ice.

A new study finds that the world’s fishing industry is depleting older fishing grounds through unsustainable harvesting practices – and that there’s no place left to look for new ones.

The study, titled The Spatial Expansion and Ecological Footprint of Fisheries (1950 to Present), was conducted by researchers at Vancouver’s University of British Columbia in conjunction with the National Geographic magazine.

The study says that 90 million tons of fish were landed in the late 1980s, up from 19 million in the 1950s. The researchers tracked the expansion of fishing activity, examining both the total number of fish caught and the impact that catching different types of fish has had on the ocean’s productivity. By the late 1990s, the world’s fishing fleets had largely run out of new fishing grounds to exploit.

Co-author Enric Sala says we can’t afford to do nothing.

The sooner we come to grips with it, the sooner we can stop the downward spiral by creating stricter fishing regulations and more marine reserves.

The researchers said that in 1950 most heavy fishing was done in the North Atlantic and the Western Pacific, but by the mid 1990s, a third of the world’s oceans and two-thirds of the continental shelves were exploited. That expansion has left only unproductive fishing areas on the high seas and the ice-covered waters of the Arctic and Antarctic for boats to move into.

Here’s the abstract.

Using estimates of the primary production required (PPR) to support fisheries catches (a measure of the footprint of fishing), we analyzed the geographical expansion of the global marine fisheries from 1950 to 2005. We used multiple threshold levels of PPR as percentage of local primary production to define ‘fisheries exploitation’ and applied them to the global dataset of spatially-explicit marine fisheries catches. This approach enabled us to assign exploitation status across a 0.5° latitude/longitude ocean grid system and trace the change in their status over the 56-year time period. This result highlights the global scale expansion in marine fisheries, from the coastal waters off North Atlantic and West Pacific to the waters in the Southern Hemisphere and into the high seas. The southward expansion of fisheries occurred at a rate of almost one degree latitude per year, with the greatest period of expansion occurring in the 1980s and early 1990s. By the mid 1990s, a third of the world’s ocean, and two-thirds of continental shelves, were exploited at a level where PPR of fisheries exceed 10% of PP, leaving only unproductive waters of high seas, and relatively inaccessible waters in the Arctic and Antarctic as the last remaining ‘frontiers.’ The growth in marine fisheries catches for more than half a century was only made possible through exploitation of new fishing grounds. Their rapidly diminishing number indicates a global limit to growth and highlights the urgent need for a transition to sustainable fishing through reduction of PPR.

Global warming is driving forest fires in northern latitudes to burn more frequently and fiercely. Consequently, boreal forests may now giving off more CO2 than they are absorbing.

So concludes a new study published in Nature Geoscience.

University of Guelph professor Merritt Turetsky, lead author of the study, warns of a dangerous feedback loop.

When most people think of wildfires, they think about trees burning, but most of what fuels a boreal fire is plant litter, moss and organic matter in surface soils. These findings are worrisome because about half the world’s soil carbon is locked in northern permafrost and peatland soils. This is carbon that has accumulated in ecosystems a little bit at a time for thousands of years, but is being released very rapidly through increased burning.

Essentially this could represent a runaway climate change scenario in which warming is leading to larger and more intense fires, releasing more greenhouse gases and resulting in more warming. This cycle can be broken for a number of reasons, but likely not without dramatic changes to the boreal forest as we currently know it.

Northern ecosystems are bearing the brunt of climate change.  Longer snow-free seasons, changes in vegetation, loss of ice and permafrost, and now fire are shifting these systems from a global carbon sink toward a carbon source.

Here’s the abstract:

Climate change has increased the area affected by forest fires each year in boreal North America. Increases in burned area and fire frequency are expected to stimulate boreal carbon losses. However, the impact of wildfires on carbon emissions is also affected by the severity of burning. How climate change influences the severity of biomass burning has proved difficult to assess. Here, we examined the depth of ground-layer combustion in 178 sites dominated by black spruce in Alaska, using data collected from 31 fire events between 1983 and 2005. We show that the depth of burning increased as the fire season progressed when the annual area burned was small. However, deep burning occurred throughout the fire season when the annual area burned was large. Depth of burning increased late in the fire season in upland forests, but not in peatland and permafrost sites. Simulations of wildfire-induced carbon losses from Alaskan black spruce stands over the past 60 years suggest that ground-layer combustion has accelerated regional carbon losses over the past decade, owing to increases in burn area and late-season burning. As a result, soils in these black spruce stands have become a net source of carbon to the atmosphere, with carbon emissions far exceeding decadal uptake.

The Sunday New York Times has an article warning that accelerating sea level rise means we’d better start thinking of abandoning some of our coastal areas – even some large cities.

“We can’t afford to protect everything. We will have to abandon some areas.”

The latest science shows we should be planning for a sea level rise of at least 3 feet over this century.

Scientists long believed that the collapse of the gigantic ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica would take thousands of years, with sea level possibly rising as little as seven inches in this century, about the same amount as in the 20th century.

But researchers have recently been startled to see big changes unfold in both Greenland and Antarctica.

As a result of recent calculations that take the changes into account, many scientists now say that sea level is likely to rise perhaps three feet by 2100 — an increase that, should it come to pass, would pose a threat to coastal regions the world over.

And the calculations suggest that the rise could conceivably exceed six feet, which would put thousands of square miles of the American coastline under water and would probably displace tens of millions of people in Asia.

The scientists say that a rise of even three feet would inundate low-lying lands in many countries, rendering some areas uninhabitable. It would cause coastal flooding of the sort that now happens once or twice a century to occur every few years. It would cause much faster erosion of beaches, barrier islands and marshes. It would contaminate fresh water supplies with salt.

Joseph Romm at Climate Progress has posted a graph showing sea level rise in three scenarios.  Of course we’re on track for the worse-case scenario which would result from our “do nothing” policies, where the midpoint of the range of sea level rise is nearly five feet.

The Times article says Orrin H. Pilkey of Duke University, one of the deans of American coastal studies, is advising coastal communities to plan for a rise of at least five feet by 2100. Romm points out that Pilkey in fact is advising to plan on a rise of at least seven feet.

Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition recently proposed a new Goal 20, which would require Oregon communities to begin planning for sea level rise. Oregon Shores’ draft goal assumed a modest 2-foot rise by 2100, about half the sea level rise considered likely in the 2009 report  The Impacts of Sea-Level Rise on the California Coast prepared for California’s Interagency Climate Action Team by the Pacific Institute. Oregon Shores’ proposal, inadequate as it was, was dismissed by the Land Conservation and Development Commission.

Especially after the most recent election results, planning for anything other than a continuation of business as usual is a non-starter, in the U.S. as well as here in Oregon. We will continue to do nothing until we are literally swamped by events.