Global Climate Change Science News

[macdoc]

it just gets worse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RInrvSjW90U

[Jason]

David Suzuki admits to global warming 'scam'.

Apparently it started as a GIGO scheme for some alternative energy companies to increase their sales. Full expose on the Fifth Estate.

[macdoc]

You been reading Onion again comrade??

Talk is Sandy more expensive than Katrina. :boggled:

I wonder when the lawsuits will begin over C02 emissions the way they occurred with S02.

ack just found this

THU NOV 29, 2012 AT 02:26 PM PST
Jump in Sea Level Slams U.S. East Coast
byFishOutofWaterFollowforClimate Change SOS

PERMALINK 61 COMMENTS / 61 NEW
Hurricane Sandy and a series of noreasters have combined with an apparently unprecedented one year jump in sea level to cause a wave of destruction on the U.S. east coast. The one year change from fall 2011 to fall 2012 is about 32mm which absolutely dwarfs the computed trend of 1.7 mm/year since 1992. The approximately 32mm jump is the largest in the satellite altimetry record which began in 1992. 32mm is 1 1/4 inches, not a huge absolute rise, but an unprecedented rise in just one year. These data have not yet been verified and published, they are "live" internet data from NOAA,

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/11/2 ... East-Coast

waiting on verification

[macdoc]

Greenhouse Gas Goals Grow More Elusive
Wynne Parry, LiveScience ContributorDate: 22 November 2012 Time: 11:51 AM ET

http://www.livescience.com/24999-emissi ... rming.html

That Kevin Anders video is a bit over the top according to a friend at NASA - the above is a better analysis..

[macdoc]

sort of obvious at this point

Adapting to a warmer world: No going back

With nations doing little to slow climate change, many people are ramping up plans to adapt to the inevitable.

Bangladeshis use the ubiquitous hyacinth weed to build floating, flood-proof crop gardens.

more

* Olive Heffernan1

28 November 2012http://www.nature.com/news/adapting-to-a-warme ... ck-1.11906

Welcome to waterworld.....sooner than anyone imagined

[Gawdzilla Sama]

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012 ... finds?lite

[Jason]

sort of obvious at this point

Adapting to a warmer world: No going back

With nations doing little to slow climate change, many people are ramping up plans to adapt to the inevitable.

Bangladeshis use the ubiquitous hyacinth weed to build floating, flood-proof crop gardens.

more

* Olive Heffernan1

28 November 2012http://www.nature.com/news/adapting-to-a-warme ... ck-1.11906

Welcome to waterworld.....sooner than anyone imagined

Clever buggers..

So that's why all operators are busy when you call tech support.

[macdoc]

broken link

http://www.nature.com/news/adapting-to- ... ck-1.11906

[macdoc]

This was new to me.....just one more thing.

Megastorms Could Drown Massive Portions of California

Huge flows of vapor in the atmosphere, dubbed "atmospheric rivers," have unleashed massive floods every 200 years, and climate change could bring more of them

By Michael D. Dettinger and B. Lynn Ingram



DROWNED: A 43-day atmospheric-river storm in 1861 turned California’s Central Valley region into an inland sea, simulated here on a current-day map. Image: Don Foley
In Brief

* Geologic evidence shows that truly massive floods, caused by rainfall alone, have occurred in California about every 200 years. The most recent was in 1861, and it bankrupted the state.
* Such floods were most likely caused by atmospheric rivers: narrow bands of water vapor about a mile above the ocean that extend for thousands of miles. Much smaller forms of these rivers regularly hit California, as well as the western coasts of other countries.
* Scientists who created a simulated megastorm, called ARkStorm, that was patterned after the 1861 flood but was less severe, found that such a torrent could force more than a million people to evacuate and cause $400 billion in losses if it happened in California today.
* Forecasters are getting better at predicting the arrival of atmospheric rivers, which will improve warnings about flooding from the common storms and about the potential for catastrophe from a megastorm.

More In This Article

The intense rainstorms sweeping in from the Pacific Ocean began to pound central California on Christmas Eve in 1861 and continued virtually unabated for 43 days. The deluges quickly transformed rivers running down from the Sierra Nevada mountains along the state’s eastern border into raging torrents that swept away entire communities and mining settlements. The rivers and rains poured into the state’s vast Central Valley, turning it into an inland sea 300 miles long and 20 miles wide. Thousands of people died, and one quarter of the state’s estimated 800,000 cattle drowned. Downtown Sacramento was submerged under 10 feet of brown water filled with debris from countless mudslides on the region’s steep slopes. California’s legislature, unable to function, moved to San Francisco until Sacramento dried out—six months later. By then, the state was bankrupt.

Editor's note (11/30/12): The article will appear in the January 2013 issue of Scientific American. We are making it freely available now because of the flooding underway in California.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... california

[Tero]

http://www.uni-mainz.de/eng/15491.php

[Jason]

Here's hoping a fault splits and Colorado sinks into a sea of molten lava. Burn all those.. such and suchs.

[macdoc]

California is under an atmospheric river, or ARK storm with the worst to come



California is under an atmospheric river or ARK storm with the worst to come. This is a string of storms that battered California on Wednesday and Friday, and will continue through Sunday. Forecasters had warned of a string of intense tropical storms that would pass through northern California over a five-day period, but this is something that has not been seen in a long time.

The first storm arrived on Wednesday, bringing wind gusts of up to 40 MPH and substantial rain.

The second storm arrived on Friday, dumping substantial amounts of rain on top of saturated ground and bringing up fears of localized flooding in certain flood prone areas.

The third storm is expected to deliver the worst soaking and will last through Sunday. All three storms are expected to have dumped 4 to 8 inches in the valley and 12 to 18 inches of rain in the Sierras.

Three unusual events are going on. First, this weather pattern is normally not seen before January. Atmospheric rivers are massive columns of warm, tropical water that are picked up from the Pacific Ocean, carried for thousands of miles, and then dumped on California. In other words, this is an atmospheric river.

Second, atmospheric rivers can rapidly melt an existing Sierra snow pack. If there is no snow pack, the water will drain off right away. The current string of storms can inundate the valley, while the Sierras will be unable to freeze the rain and serve as cold storage for a slower spring snow melt and controlled runoff. Whatever these storms dump, it all will start to drain right away.

Third, the natural watershed that drains the massive Sierra mountain range will bring most of Northern California’s water to the Feather and American rivers. Those two rivers meet up at Sacramento, where the water either heads out through the delta to San Francisco Bay or it is sent southward via the central canal. Add in thousands of creeks, streams, sloughs and tributaries, and a lot of trouble can happen in a relatively short period.

Minor atmospheric rivers are traditionally an annual event in California. Those are called the “Pineapple Express”. However a major atmospheric river can be a huge problem. Scientists refer to a devastating atmospheric river as an “ARK storm” that could flood part of California’s central valley to a 20 foot depth. The last ARK storm occurred in the 1800s and was estimated to have dumped several times the volume of the Mississippi River during 40 straight days of rain.

The United States Geological Service (USGS) has officially designated the current series of storms as an atmospheric river. The USGS also discusses the ARk Storm Scenario, a major experiment that simulated the worst that could happen.

Currently high winds and storm dynamics may create hail and minor tornado activity. Northern California has already seen several small tornadoes this fall.

California is under an atmospheric river or ARK storm with the worst to come, so all residents are advised to prepare for flooding in low-lying areas. Clogged storm drains, falling trees and inundated roads, will aggravate some flooding. This would be the best time to review the business and household disaster preparedness plans and to prepare for power outages and anything else that comes with flooding in Northern California.

CALIFORNIA STORMS 2012DECEMBER 1, 2012BY: EDITH ALLEN

wow first Sandy on the East Coast and now the west coast....expensive year for weather....Sci Am sure called that - Shades of Katrina where they ran simulations the year before that came only too true

this was the prediction in 2011

ARkStorm: California’s Other 'Big One'

ScienceDaily (Jan. 18, 2011) — For emergency planning purposes, scientists unveiled a hypothetical California scenario that describes a storm that could produce up to 10 feet of rain, cause extensive flooding (in many cases overwhelming the state's flood-protection system) and result in more than $300 billion in damage.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 142512.htm

[macdoc]

EcoAlert: Forty-Seven ESA/NASA Experts Warn of Increasing Ice Melt & Rising Sea Levels



Thinning in the ice steam and surrounding ice sheet is also evident. After two decades of satellite observations, an international team of experts brought together by ESA and NASA has produced the most accurate assessment of ice losses from Antarctica and Greenland to date. This study finds that the combined rate of ice sheet melting is increasing. The image above shows the Kangerdlugssuaq glacier in eastern Greenland from 1992 and 2011 from the ERS mission. The ice stream’s calving front retreated by five kilometres over 19 years.
The new research shows that melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets has added 11.1 mm to global sea levels since 1992. This amounts to about 20% of all sea-level rise over the survey period. About two thirds of the ice loss was from Greenland, and the remainder was from Antarctica.

Although the ice sheet losses fall within the range reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, the spread of the estimate at that time was so broad that it was not clear whether Antarctica was growing or shrinking.The new estimates are a vast improvement – more than twice as accurate – thanks to the inclusion of more satellite data, and confirm that both Antarctica and Greenland are losing ice.

The study also shows that the combined rate of ice sheet melting has increased over time and, altogether, Greenland and Antarctica are now losing more than three times as much ice, equivalent to 0.95 mm of sea-level rise per year, as they were in the 1990s, equivalent to 0.27 mm of sea level rise per year.

more
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... vels-.html

[macdoc]

More ice loss through snowfall on Antarctica December 12, 2012



National Science Foundation Stronger snowfall increases future ice discharge from Antarctica. Global warming leads to more precipitation as warmer air holds more moisture – hence earlier research suggested the Antarctic ice sheet might grow under climate change. Now a study published in Nature shows that a lot of the ice gain due to increased snowfall is countered by an acceleration of ice-flow to the ocean. Thus Antarctica's contribution to global sea-level rise is probably greater than hitherto estimated, the team of authors from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) concludes. Ads by Google New Sustainability Book - Program and Portfolio Planning Population, Climate & Energy - http://www.pmhaugan.com "Between 30 and 65 percent of the ice gain due to enhanced snowfall in Antarctica is countervailed by enhanced ice loss along the coastline," says lead-author Ricarda Winkelmann. For the first time, an ensemble of ice-physics simulations shows that future ice discharge is increased up to three times because of additional precipitation in Antarctica under global warming. "The effect exceeds that of surface warming as well as that of basal ice-shelf melting," Winkelmann says. During the last decade, the Antarctic ice-sheet has lost volume at a rate comparable to that of Greenland. "The one certainty we have about Antarctica under global warming is that snowfall will increase," Winkelmann explains. "Since surface melt might remain comparably small even under strong global warming, because Antarctica will still be a pretty chilly place, the big question is: How much more mass within the ice sheet will slowly but inexorably flow off Antarctica and contribute to sea-level rise, which is one of the major impacts of climate change." Since snowfall on the ice masses of Antarctica takes water out of the global water cycle, the continent's net contribution to sea-level rise could be negative during the next 100 years – this is what a number of global and regional models suggest. The new findings indicate that this effect to a large extent is offset by changes in the ice-flow dynamics. Snow piling up on the ice is heavy and hence exerts pressure – the higher the ice the more pressure. Because additional snowfall elevates the grounded ice-sheet but less so the floating ice shelves, it flows more rapidly towards the coast of Antarctica where it eventually breaks off into icebergs and elevates sea level. A number of processes are relevant for ice-loss in Antarctica, most notably to sub-shelf melting caused by warming of the surrounding ocean water. These phenomena explain the already observed contribution to sea-level rise. "We now know that snowfall in Antarctica will not save us from sea-level rise," says second author Anders Levermann, research domain co-chair at PIK and a lead author of the sea-level change chapter of the upcoming IPCC's 5th assessment report. "Sea level is rising – that is a fact. Now we need to understand how quickly we have to adapt our coastal infrastructure; and that depends on how much CO2 we keep emitting into the atmosphere," Levermann concludes.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-ice-loss-s ... a.html#jCp

[macdoc]

Reality intruding again on the shrinking contigent of deniers.....nother of their myths hits the skids.

West Antarctic Ice Sheet warming twice earlier estimate
Matt McGrath By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent, BBC News


The data from Byrd Station shows rapid warming on the west Antarctic ice sheet

A new analysis of temperature records indicates that the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is warming nearly twice as fast as previously thought.

US researchers say they found the first evidence of warming during the southern hemisphere's summer months.

They are worried that the increased melting of ice as a result of warmer temperatures could contribute to sea-level rise.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The scientists compiled data from records kept at Byrd station, established by the US in the mid-1950s and located towards the centre of the West Antarctic ice sheet (WAIS).

Previously scientists were unable to draw any conclusions from the Byrd data as the records were incomplete.

The new work used a computer model of the atmosphere and a numerical analysis method to fill in the missing observations.

The results indicate an increase of 2.4C in average annual temperature between 1958 and 2010.

"What we're seeing is one of the strongest warming signals on Earth," says Andrew Monaghan, a co-author and scientist at the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research.

"This is the first time we've been able to determine that there's warming going on during the summer season." he added.
Top to bottom

It might be natural to expect that summers even in Antarctica would be warmer than other times of the year. But the region is so cold, it is extremely rare for temperatures to get above freezing.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

This place has very variable weather, some of it is influenced by human acts and some of it isn't ”

End Quote Prof David Bromwich Ohio State University

According to co-author Prof David Bromwich from Ohio State University, this is a critical threshold.

"The fact that temperatures are rising in the summer means there's a prospect of WAIS not only being melted from the bottom as we know it is today, but in future it looks probable that it will be melting from the top as well," he said.

Previous research published in Nature indicated that the WAIS is being warmed by the ocean, but this new work suggests that the atmosphere is playing a role as well.

The scientists say that the rise in temperatures has been caused by changes in winds and weather patterns coming from the Pacific Ocean.

"We're seeing a more dynamic impact that's due to climate change that's occurring elsewhere on the globe translating down and increasing the heat transportation to the WAIS." said Dr Monaghan.

But he was unable to say with certainty that the greater warming his team found was due to human activities.

"The jury is still out on that. That piece of research has not been done. My opinion is that it probably is, but I can't say that definitively."

This view was echoed by Prof Bromwich, who suggested that further study would be needed.
Larsen b ice shelf The Larsen B ice shelf collapsed in just a month in 2002

"The tasks now are to look at the relative contributions of natural variability," he said.

"This place has very variable weather - some of it is influenced by human acts and some of it isn't. I think its premature to answer that question right now."

Whatever the source, the researchers are concerned that this warming can lead to more melting and have direct and indirect effects on global sea levels. The direct impacts are the run-off of melting waters into the sea.

But the scientists say this is unlikely to happen for several decades because much of the water is likely to percolate down the ice sheet and refreeze.
Glacial pace

The indirect effect is that it can "pre-condition" the ice shelves that float at the edges of the ice sheet. The scientists say that this is what happened in 2002 on the Antarctic peninsula when the Larsen B shelf collapsed spectacularly in just a month.

"The melt water went down into the crevasses and filled them up," Dr Monaghan said.

"Just like a pothole in the road in wintertime, the water will freeze and expand and break it apart."

He is concerned that a similar situation could now occur on the WAIS.

"What we saw after the breakup of Larsen was that the glaciers that were buttressed by the ice shelves sped up tremendously, by a factor of eight. That's a potential concern of the enhanced melt in west Antarctica if the warming trend we find in summer continues."

The authors say they are confident that the data from Byrd Station is representative of the region because the scientific outpost sits on a plateau and conditions are essentially uniform for a considerable distance.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-20804192