Global Climate Change Science News

[Sean Hayden]

[Sean Hayden]

[Brian Peacock]

Sophistry.

[Sean Hayden]

He lost me elsewhere when he wondered aloud why cancer wasn't seen as an existential threat like global warming given it causes many more deaths.

[macdoc]

While only indirectly associated with AGW ...more intense storms are expected and this one will set a few records . FFS grapefruit sized hail !!!




https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ ... -1.6539442

[Brian Peacock]

"The Colorado river is running dry - nobody wants to talk about this. How do you do California without the Colorado river? How do you do America as a superpower without California?" -- Mark Blyth

[Brian Peacock]

A long read...

Revealed: how climate breakdown is supercharging toll of extreme weather

The devastating intensification of extreme weather is laid bare today in a Guardian analysis that shows how people across the world are losing their lives and livelihoods due to more deadly and more frequent heatwaves, floods, wildfires and droughts brought by the climate crisis.

The analysis of hundreds of scientific studies – the most comprehensive compilation to date – demonstrates beyond any doubt how humanity’s vast carbon emissions are forcing the climate to disastrous new extremes. At least a dozen of the most serious events, from killer heatwaves to broiling seas, would have been all but impossible without human-caused global heating, the analysis found.

Most worryingly, all this is happening with a rise of just 1C in the planet’s average temperature. The role of global heating in supercharging extreme weather is happening at “astonishing speed”, scientists say.

“The world is changing fast and it’s already hurting us – that is the blunt summary,” said Prof Maarten van Aalst, the director of the International Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. The world is currently on track for a rise of at least 2.5C. Based on what we have experienced so far, that would deliver death and destruction far greater than already suffered.

The studies analysed used a scientific technique called attribution to determine how much worse, or more likely, an extreme weather event was made by human-caused global heating. The technique’s power is in drawing a direct link between the disasters that people suffer through and the often abstract increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases caused by the mass burning of fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution. It brings the scientific reality of the climate crisis crashing home.

The climate information website Carbon Brief compiled a new database of attribution studies of more than 500 events – every such study available – and shared it exclusively with the Guardian. The analysis of the database and interviews with the world’s leading attribution scientists shows beyond any doubt that we are already deep into the era of climate death and destruction.

The key findings
The 12 events deemed virtually impossible without humanity’s destabilisation of the climate span the globe, including intense heatwaves in North America, Europe and Japan, soaring temperatures in Siberia and sweltering seas off Australia.
Seventy-one per cent of the 500 extreme weather events and trends in the database were found to have been made more likely or more severe by human-caused climate change, including 93% of heatwaves, 68% of droughts and 56% of floods or heavy rain. Only 9% of the events were less likely, mostly cold snaps and snowstorms...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... me-weather

[macdoc]

"The Colorado river is running dry - nobody wants to talk about this. How do you do California without the Colorado river? How do you do America as a superpower without California?" -- Mark Blyth

swipe the water from Canada


https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ni ... saved-amer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_ ... California

[Sean Hayden]

We’re (not) running out of water – a better way to measure water scarcity

...

A nuanced picture

In the end, we sidestepped definitions of stress and opted to be descriptive. In our study, we decided to report the fraction of renewable water used up by people annually, seasonally, and in dry years.

What does this metric reveal? You’re probably in trouble if you’re using up 100 percent of your water, or even 75 percent, since there’s no room for error in dry years and there’s no water in your river for fish or boats or swimmers. But only local context can illuminate that.

We found that globally, just two percent of watersheds use more than 75 percent of their total renewable water each year. Most of these places depend on fossil groundwater and irrigate heavily; they will run out of water.

More of the places we recognize as water-limited are seasonally depleted (nine percent of watersheds), facing regular periods of water shortage. Twenty-one percent of the world’s watersheds are depleted in dry years; these are the places where it’s easy to believe there’s plenty of water to do what we like, yet people struggle semi-regularly with periods of shortage.

We also found that 68 percent of watersheds have very low depletion; when those watersheds experience water stress, it is due to access, equality and governance.

To our surprise, we found that no watersheds were moderately depleted, defined as watersheds that in an average year are using up half their water. But it turns out that all of those watersheds are heavily depleted sometimes – they have months when nearly all the water is consumed and months when little is used.

Managing water to meet current and future demand is critical. Biophysical indicators, such as the ones we looked at, can’t tell us where a water shortage is stressful to society or ecosystems, but a good biophysical indicator can help us make useful comparisons, target interventions, evaluate risk and look globally to find management models that might work at home.

https://theconversation.com/were-not-ru ... city-58699

[Svartalf]

"The Colorado river is running dry - nobody wants to talk about this. How do you do California without the Colorado river? How do you do America as a superpower without California?" -- Mark Blyth

swipe the water from Canada


https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ni ... saved-amer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_ ... California

har har har, they gonna tap the great slave lake and pipeline the water down to arizona?

[macdoc]

There is 5% more water in the atmosphere from AGW so more intense rain events but planet does not need deluges and a lot is in the wrong place or wrong time of year.....and way too fucking much is wasted.
At least the Australian inland aquifer is recharged by rain events ( tho slow process )
The US is fucked as the Ogalla aquifer is ice age water not being recharged, India in the same boat - both are 300' feet down and dropping.
Canada?? We gots lots of fresh water but even there where it is is a problem.
I suspect someone is going to tow an iceberg one of these days....tho desal is getting better and cheaper.

[Sean Hayden]

I'm noticing a theme with you doc:

[macdoc]

Such as ?

[Brian Peacock]

Brutal heatwave headed for US west, raising health fears.

...
More than 50 million Americans live in areas now under excessive heat watches, warnings and advisories. Temperatures are expected to hit 115F (46C) in the coming days across parts of southern California, Sacramento and the San Joaquin Valley, according to the National Weather Service. In Death Valley, temperatures were forecast to reach more than 120F (49C) – and perhaps match the highest temperature observed globally in the month of September.

Extreme heat warnings have been triggered up and down the state, including in the Bay Area. Temperatures are expected to build throughout the week, with northern and southern California bracing for the highest temperatures during the long weekend.

Parts of the Pacific north-west, Nevada, Idaho and Montana will also face dangerous temperatures. Boise, Idaho, is expected to finish August with an average temperature of 80F (27C) – the highest since record keeping began in 1875. Temperatures are expected to be eight to 12 degrees above normal in north-west Arizona, south-east California and southern Nevada.

Across many of these areas, temperatures are expected to cool only slightly overnight – elevating the risk for heatstroke and deaths, especially for vulnerable populations who lack air conditioning.

...

[macdoc]

Good read and thorough.


https://grist.org/climate-tipping-point ... al-forest/