If we don’t reverse the climate system’s growing energy imbalance it will soon drive us over the lethal fall into global mass extinction
ALL the global climate indicators are at or near all-time records so extreme that by September last year staid climate professionals have called the readings “gobsmackingly bananas.” — a phrase that is now in common usage in the climate science community. To some, the readings spell doom is nigh. But, here, i’m with the Guardian’s Fiona Katsaukas and her friend in the green shirt.
These gobsmacking records bear witness that Earth’s climate system has shifted into a new kind of rapidly evolving climate regime that is not encompassed or anticipated by existing climate forecasting models (at least not before 2050…). Every month since September has set new, still more extreme records.ALL the global climate indicators are at or near all-time records so extreme that by September last year staid climate professionals have called the readings “gobsmackingly bananas.” — a phrase that is now in common usage in the climate science community. These records bear witness that Earth’s climate system has shifted into a new kind of rapidly evolving climate regime that is not encompassed or anticipated by existing climate forecasting models (at least not before 2050…). Every month since September has set new, still more extreme records.
In 1985, the renowned planetary systems scientist and cosmologist (also one of the best communicators of hard science to the public the world has known), Karl Sagan addressed the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Hazardous Wastes and Toxic Substances hearing on the greenhouse effect to explain the then scientific understanding of global warming. The 17 minute video on YouTube of his speech is extracted here by C-SPAN. C-SPAN also has the full 2 hour, 24 min video of the hearing. I mention this to triply underline the fact that the science of global warming and its consequences was already clearly understood four decades ago. The only fault in Sagan’s exposition is that the predicted dire consequences are happening sooner than he anticipated. This is still a common problem in climate science today where most climatologists trained in maths or physics still fail to appreciate the importance of fundamental non-linearity and chaos of complex dynamical systems like climate. The existential emergency Sagan predicted for the latter half of the 21st Century has already started now.
Because the [greenhouse] effects occupy more than a human generation there is a tendency to say that they are not our problem. Of course, then nobody’s problem, not on my tour of duty, not on my term of office… It’s something for the next century. Let the next century worry about it. But the problem is that the greenhouse effect is one of them which have long time constants. If you don’t worry about it now, it’s too late later on; and so in this issue, as in so many other issues, we are passing on extremely grave problems for our children when the time to solve the problems if they can be solved at all is now.
Carl Sagan, 1985, transcribed from C-SPAN video [2:30-3:15]
Today’s screams heard now from continually breaking climate records are the realities anticipated 39 years ago in this address;
In my “Feb. 2024 climate extremes” report (published March 12) I review the records as they were being broken in the February peak of the global climate cycle. I am currently trying to finish an update on the first anniversary of setting continuous daily record high global sea surface temperatures. detailing the piling up energy flows through the climate system (as described by Sagan) from the time solar energy is absorbed in the climate system and is eventually emitted back to space in the form of infrared emissions leaving the Earth. I have posted the current state of the first part, “Considering the first anniversary of a new climate regime — Accelerating down the road to extinction in Earth’s Hothouse Hell?” in the Google Docs format (that everyone should be able to read). Completing this is difficult because many indicators are literally breaking records faster than I can write about them. The most important of these regularly breaking records is the daily average sea surface temperature (SST), which is the first place excess solar energy piles up in the climate system. On 9 May SST is still more than 0.1 °C above 2023’s 9 May record – the 423 day of continuous daily records. The graph below focuses mainly on the part of the years where this year’s record is on top of last year’s. Note that Sagan also predicted rapidly rising sea levels. Today’s Washington Post describes how the southeastern US is currently being affected by this rise (probably because hot water is being backed up in the slowing Gulf Stream).
However, so people can see the evidence that is driving us here in @VoteClimateOne to do what we can to fight the emergency, I have also been posting to X-Twitter, and I include a couple of samples here:
If not this year, the next 1 or 2 years will see Kim Stanley Robinson's million-death heat wave: The Ministry for the Future (https://t.co/6ifnrqiIzP). If we ignore this emergency and fail to totally mobilize to reverse Earth's energy imbalance before society collapses, we'll… https://t.co/4eKQiB9Egypic.twitter.com/TBAblGHNtf
Copernicus offers no good news. Their news is amplified by a small sample from other sources. Global mass extinction (including us) is virtually certain unless we reverse the energy imbalance. However, given that humans created the climate crisis with 19th-century tech, we should… https://t.co/GxBU3LXd67pic.twitter.com/u9xdLI8iHI
As ever increasing numbers of climate scientists and aware commentators are crying out that it is time to sound the emergency alarms and urgently mobilize to fight the global emergency while there is still some chance that with our far greater knowledge and more powerful science than Sagan knew about (he suggested that by now it would be too late to stop the inevitable catastrophic end), it might still be possible for us reverse the solar energy imbalance that is rapidly driving our planet’s temperatures towards runaway feedbacks that will ensure global mass extinction is truly under way before the end of the 21st Century.
Another new fact in today’s in box hit me in the face. The record high rate of increase in CO₂ causing a majority the backup of the solar energy that is cooking us is still ACCELERATING UPWARDS at a record high RATE OF ACCELERATION. To me this suggests that runaway warming driven by positive feedbacks with temperature has well and truly started. ‘Natural’ emissions are already coming out of the ground, permafrost, wetlands, forests, and oceans faster than we are reducing fossil fuel emissions.
I’m like the girl in the green shirt in Katsaukas’s cartoon. I think it is well and truly time to sound all the emergency alarms and start total global mobilization to fight the crisis. My knowledge and experience tell me that if enough of us are willing to accept the reality of the danger and work together as a disciplined emergency force, we have sufficient knowledge and technological prowess to turn off the road to extinction and find some way to sustain at least some of the living world we know today.
Born in 1939, I’m old enough to remember living in a blacked out house in Los Angeles, and then the successful ending of WWII in 1945 little more than 4 years after America mobilized and joined the war at the end of 1941. At least in 1941-42 Americans managed the kind of mobilization we need today. I think we might still be able to defeat the runaway warming enemy if we start soon enough and fight hard enough to find a place in a still sustainable biosphere. On the other hand, I’m as close to certain that if continue to avoid looking at the grim and (for some) terrifying reality in hopes of continuing with business as usual, we will be burning up in the midst of the worst global mass extinction (i.e., even worse than the End Permian extinction ~ 250 million years ago).
As well as learning about global mass extinction when I learned to read from my father’s university textbooks in geology and paleontology, I grew up in navy towns started university as a pre-engineering student before changing my major to zoology and earning my PhD in evolutionary biology as well as teaching a variety of genetic, organismic, systems and population biology courses. I also worked professionally as a radiation ecologist and for the last 17 years before ‘retiring’ I designed a variety of documentation and knowledge management systems for Australia’s then largest defense engineering company. There, my systems helped ensure the on-time, on-budget completion of the ~7 billion $AU ANZAC Ship Project. (This is one of the very few large defense projects in world history that did not end up years overdue and billions of dollars of cost overruns, thanks in good part to systems I designed specifically to solve the kinds of management and engineering change issues that defeat most large defense projects). Finally in retirement I have spent some 15 years researching and writing on the coevolution of humans and our technologies prior to deciding that doing what I could to address the climate crisis was far more important than finishing a book for a society doing nothing to save itself from extinction.
In @VoteClimateOne.org we have thought a lot about what we can do to help the mobilization. It is clear that most governments in the world today are being run by fools, useful idiots, or puppets owned and led by already insanely rich fossil fuel and other special interests will do or say almost anything to gather more wealth. Political party discipline means that a majority government can be controlled by a handful of ‘strong’ party members and functionaries in leadership roles. For example, in Australia, the supposedly ‘climate friendly’ Labor majority government has just demonstrated its fealty to its puppet masters over effective climate action.
@VoteClimateOne.org has a two-pronged approach to try to change governments into supporters and even leaders of the climate emergency mobilization effort.
Given how urgent the need for action is, we hope to convince the puppets and other blockers that climate action is far more important and urgent than whatever benefits they gain from catering to the desires of their patrons and masters. However, this will take a massive effort – much more than just supplying truthful information that is easily ignored or actively denied. Minds might be changed if enough people piled on each and every recalcitrant parliamentarian – but this would take the concerted action of a large number of climate and environment action groups that has to this point not been forthcoming.
The other prong in the spear, is to actually replace enough of the recalcitrant parliamentarians with progressive community representatives or small party members who truly understand and accept the crisis and the need for action; and who are willing to put in the effort to get elected — to prevent either major party from forming a majority government. Not only will there be more sensible and effective parliamentarians, but any party forming government will have to listen to and compromise with genuine community representatives to do anything, even if this requires them to mobilize an effective climate action.
Our home page, ACT NOW, and TRAFFIC LIGHT VOTING explain how this all works, and provides examples of how we have addressed past elections. Hopefully all voters will have the chance to see and think about what these pages have to offer, and inform their voting decisions with the climate crisis in mind. As elections approach, CLIMATE SENTINEL NEWS will be providing frequent updates on the state of the climate and relevant political news.
Our grandchildren tell us all to “vote climate one” so they can have a happy future rather than the descent into Earth’s hothouse hell (like Sagan and most climate scientists until the last few months, the authors of the referenced paper have overestimated just how much time we have left for effective action).
WE MUST BEGIN ACTION NOW!
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
Notable observations and news items from the Web, with no processing and little in the way of comment. Make of them what you will.
Leading up to this September’s extremes
Firefighters flying over a controlled burn to fight wildfires in Canada’s Quebec Province. Photograph: Genevieve Poirier/Societe De Protection Des Forets/AFP/Getty Images (from the article)
From June to August 2023, a series of extreme weather events exacerbated by climate breakdown caused death and destruction across the globe.
As the world sweltered through the hottest three month spell in human history this summer, extreme weather disasters took more than 18,000 lives, drove at least 150,000 people from their homes, affected hundreds of millions of others and caused billions of dollars of damage.
That is a conservative tally from the most widely covered disasters between early June and early September, which have been compiled in the timeline below as a reminder of how tough this period has been and what might lie ahead.
How much are these extremes costing society. For an idea see the following graphic from Scientific American’s blog. Note: this graphic applies only to the US,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/28/crazy-off-the-charts-records-has-humanity-finally-broken-the-climate Warning: Data is provided for this article by climate scientists who suffer from the reticence causing academic and institutional scientists to downplay any overly ‘dramatic’ warnings in order to avoid alarming departmental colleagues, administrators, or governments influencing hiring, promotion, financial support for research, etc. Google “scientific reticence” and you will find lots of evidence on how it works.
The current extremely low sea ice will have a range of impacts. Changed ocean stratification and circulation will alter basal melting beneath ice shelves48. Greater coastal exposure will increase coastal erosion and reduce ice-shelf stability49. Changes in dense shelf water production will alter bottom water formation and deep ocean ventilation50. Sea ice changes will also have contrasting influences on Adélie and emperor penguin colonies51,52, and substantially alter human activities along the Antarctic coastline.
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have been attributed as the primary cause of Southern Ocean warming, and here we suggest a potential link to a regime shift in Antarctic sea ice. While for many years, Antarctic sea ice increased despite increasing global temperatures6, it appears that we may now be seeing the inevitable decline, long projected by climate models53. The far-reaching implications of Antarctic sea ice loss highlight the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Off the previous chart, again…. In 12 days another ~500,000 hectares have burned! Will the burning stop for winter? What does this portend for Australia’s upcoming El Nino summer?
The record for the 23rd blew the Canadian system’s off the chart! The following chart from Copernicus, the EU’s equivalent of NASA, that operates the satellites, suggests the data from the 23d is probably a real record of what the satellites actually recorded. In most years the wildfires would have been more-or-less through for the year. Yet 23 Sept shows BY FAR the largest number of hotspots recorded for the year so far, previous highs being 9269 for June 22 and 9692 for July 13.
For the latest Natural Resources Canada tabulation, see https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/maps/fm3?type=arpt. Note 1: the current version of the total burned area chart can be seen by scrolling down to the bottom of the table accessed by this link.
Note 2: the following Guardian chart was PUBLISHED on 22 Sept.
Note: warmer winter temperatures allowed mountain pine beetle populations to grow explosively through this region due to additional reproduction of adult beetles that were normally killed off by hard freezing winters. I did several Facebook posts in 2016 and 2018 on the increasing fire hazard this would create until the dead biomass was removed. This year’s extreme temperatures facilitated this!
The Canadian 🔥 season is not yet done but I have a few URGENT questions we must address. 1. How many of these fires will burn underground overwinter and emerge as spring zombie fires? 2. How much extra permafrost will thaw because of this year’s severe burning? #ClimateCrisispic.twitter.com/Ih0ilRHQ6Q
[Note that 2020- Siberian wildfires plus this years’ wildfires in the Canadian Arctic Zone probably produced massive increases in permafrost GHG emissions beyond what was happening during the years included in this survey.]
Map of northern permafrost extent (data from Obu et al. 2021) overlain with the spatial extent of the permafrost domain included (BAWLD-RECCAP2 regions). The spatial extent of the permafrost region de ned in this study as an overlap of permafrost extent and the Boreal Arctic Wetlands and Lakes Dataset (BAWLD, Olefeldt et al. 2021a,bScheme of annual atmospheric GHGs exchange (CO2, CH4, and N2O) for the ve terrestrial land cover classes (Boreal Forests, Non-permafrost Wetlands, Dry Tundra, Tundra Wetlands and Permafrost Bogs); inland water classes (Rivers and Lakes). Annual lateral fluxes from coastal erosion and riverine fluxes are also reported in Tg C yr-1 and Tg N yr-1. Symbols for fluxes indicate high (x>Q3), medium (Q1<x<Q3), and low (<Q1) fluxes, in comparison the quartile (Q). Note that the magnitudes across three di erent GHG fluxes within each land cover class cannot be compared with each other.
ClimateReanalyzer
Stationary anomaly, somewhat hotter on 23rd than 22nd
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/11/us-record-billion-dollar-climate-disastersNote, as the frequency, extent, and ferocity of climate disasters continue to increase with accelerating global warming, newer disasters will overlap and add to destruction from previous disasters where there has not been enough time to complete repair and remediation leading to the accelerating accumulated climate damage — until society no longer has the resources to continue repairing and replacing what has already been repaired and replaced. At this point social collapse is inevitable…… We must stop and reverse the process of global warming that is causing this or face near-term extinction.
11 September 2023 – Coming out of winter — not a good look for the rest of the year in Australia!
In February 2023, Antarctic sea ice set a record minimum; there have now been three record-breaking low sea ice summers in seven years. Following the summer minimum, circumpolar Antarctic sea ice coverage remained exceptionally low during the autumn and winter advance, leading to the largest negative areal extent anomalies observed over the satellite era. Here, we show the confluence of Southern Ocean subsurface warming and record minima and suggest that ocean warming has played a role in pushing Antarctic sea ice into a new low-extent state. In addition, this new state exhibits different seasonal persistence characteristics, suggesting that the underlying processes controlling Antarctic sea ice coverage may have altered. [my emphasis]
a Antarctic monthly sea ice extent (SIE) anomaly time series from the National Snow and Ice Data Center over the satellite period, November 1978 to June 2023, in millions of square kilometres. Sea ice extent anomalies are calculated relative to the 1979–2022 climatology. Two change points are detected, separating the time series into three periods: November 1978 to August 2007 (grey), September 2007 to August 2016 (blue), and September 2016 to June 2023 (orange). The means of each period are shown by the horizontal lines and are statistically distinguishable. b Antarctic monthly SIE anomaly time series expressed as a percentage of the monthly climatology over 1979–2022. Periods are coloured as in (a). Record minima months occurring since 2016 are noted in (a, b). c Southern Ocean 50–65°S temperature anomaly time series from Argo over January 2004 to May 2023, in degrees Celsius. Ocean temperature anomalies are calculated relative to the 2004-2022 climatology. Dashed vertical lines show the sea ice extent change points. Stippling indicates values outside ± 1 standard deviation, where the standard deviation is calculated independently at each depth level to account for the change in magnitude of the variability with depth. Warm anomalies shown in orange and red are evident below 100 m from 2015, and at the surface from late 2016.Antarctic five-day sea ice extent anomalies in millions of square kilometres for each year from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Sea ice extent anomalies are calculated relative to the 1979–2022 climatology. Anomalies are coloured by period as in Fig. 1: November 1978 to August 2007 (grey), September 2007 to August 2016 (blue), and September 2016 to June 2023 (orange). January to June 2023 is shown in bold orange, with the largest negative areal extent anomaly of the satellite era observed during June 2023.
Implications
The current extremely low [Antarctic] sea ice will have a range of impacts. Changed ocean stratification and circulation will alter basal melting beneath ice shelves48. Greater coastal exposure will increase coastal erosion and reduce ice-shelf stability49. Changes in dense shelf water production will alter bottom water formation and deep ocean ventilation50. Sea ice changes will also have contrasting influences on Adélie and emperor penguin colonies51,52, and substantially alter human activities along the Antarctic coastline.
Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have been attributed as the primary cause of Southern Ocean warming, and here we suggest a potential link to a regime shift in Antarctic sea ice. While for many years, Antarctic sea ice increased despite increasing global temperatures, it appears that we may now be seeing the inevitable decline, long projected by climate models. The far-reaching implications of Antarctic sea ice loss highlight the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. [my emphasis]
Key facts from CDR (Center for Disaster Recovery):
As of Sept. 15, the Libyan Red Crescent said the death toll had reached 11,300 people in Derna alone. Officials expect this figure to continue to rise, possibly as high as 20,000. About 170 people were also killed in other parts of eastern Libya, including in Susa, Marj, Bayda and Um Razaz. More than 7,000 people were injured and at least 10,100 people are still reported to be missing. Because of the lack of telecommunications, some may be displaced and unable to reach family, but due to the large-scale destruction, it is hard to confirm these figures.
According to Floodlist, Libya’s National Center of Meteorology reported, “in a 24 hour period to Sept. 10, a staggering 414.1 mm [16.2 inches] of rain was recorded in Bayda, while 240 mm [9.5 inches] of rain fell in Marawah in the District of Jabal al Akhdar, and 170 mm [6.7] fell in Al Abraq in the Derna District.”
I used publicly available satellite imagery to try assess the damage attributed largely due to the failure of two dams. My conclusion is that the dams were no more than momentary and relatively insignificant barriers to to the flow of an inconceivably large volume of water. The following satellite images from Google Earth, and Sentinel Hub’s EO Browser clearly demonstrate the power of our planet’s increasingly extreme weather events driven by global warming. As the oceans and atmosphere warm, the atmosphere is able to transport increasingly stupendous volumes of water (in the form of water vapor) over the land to be dropped when the air cools for any reason.
The following image is what appears to be the center of the city of Derna (pop ~100,000) immediately before Storm Daniel dropped part of its load of water in the watershed of Wadi Derna. The very dry stream bed of Wadi Derna crosses the center of the image. If you have access to Google Earth, you can zoom in to see shadows of the few individual people out in the mid-day sun.
Zooming in, note the large building on the NE side of the Wadi 3 blocks downstream from the bridge on the lower left corner of the picture. It is a high-rise, where the tallest part is 9 stories above the ground floor, and the rest five. I determined the number of floor by counting the sun shades visible on the downstream side of the building. This is one of the few structures left in this part of town that can be identified in the next image.
Immediately after it looked like this:
Note the conspicuous high-rise (10 stories) easily marked by its long shadow in this image. The image below images this building from the down-stream side. The image here is relatively low resolution, but the three lowest floors (facing AWAY from the flood) have clearly been gutted by the flood. The bridge referred to in the previous picture has vanished leaving only two supports (aligned with the stream flow) to show where it was. Rows of 4-6 story buildings (and even some 8 story buildings just off the left edge of this image) extending 3-4 and even more rows back from the Wadi have totally vanished or are only memorialized by a bit of concrete slab or trace of a foundation wall.
The next two pictures zoom in on the area between the vanished bridge in the above images and the next bridge upstream (just off the edge of the above).
The three buildings to the left of the Wadi at the bottom of the image were respectively 7, 4, and 7 stories high
The next two pictures show the site of the lower dam – 250 meters upstream from the inland edge of the city.
Note: the dam has no spillway. Overflow protection is provided by the flared drain pipe (circular structure) in the lower left of the picture. Using Google Earth’s measuring tool, the diameter of the drain as approximately 6m. On the upstream side the surface of the reed bed is ~24 m above sea level, and the level of the road over the top is 45 m, giving the dam height of 21 m. On the downstream side the base of the dam is at 26 m, with the outlet for the overflow drain at approx 22 m. The length of the dam across the top is ~115 m, across the bottom (at reed level) is 50 m; thickness at the bottom is ~74 m, 8.5 m at the roadway.
The next Google Earth image is of the upper dam (12.5 km upstream from the lower dam) from immediately before Storm David’s rain. There is no high resolution image available from after the flood.
The drain tube (right side upstream) seems to be 7m in diameter. The dam is ~10 m high and 270 m long. 143 m thick at the base and 6.5 m thick at the top.
The last composite graphic gives an impression of the amount of water held behind both dams in the days immediately prior to Storm David. All are sourced via Sentinel Hub’s EO Browser and all are at the same scale – close to the maximum resolution available. The left four images are of the upper dam and its lake, while those on the right are of the lower dam and its lake. The upper three images of each dam use the Normalized Difference Moisture Index NDMI – that basically highlights any moisture in the otherwise barren landscape. The bottom picture is the same view as the one immediately above, except that it displays “true colors”. On the left in the top picture, on 10/01/2023 there was some water backed up behind the dam, perhaps 2 m deep at the dam wall given that most of the upstream face is still dry. The second picture, on 02/09/2023 shortly before Storm Daniel shows essentially zero moisture behind the dam, except there is a tiny blue streak in the bottom of the bright yellow area that is too small to be resolved at the magnification shown here. The blue areas below the dam are well watered orchards and fields – not standing water. The dam is visible in both of the above pictures. The third picture, from 12/09/2023 immediately after Storm Daniel shows the Wadi Derna has been scraped clean of any sign of a dam or the well watered agricultural area below the dam save the blue area off to the side. Inspection of the area just downstream from the pictures here in the before and after show the complete obliteration of farms and vegetation together with the road to a height of 20+ meters above the bottom of the wadi. A little further upstream – a bit closer to the dam, the landscape has been scraped up to a height of 38 m! above the wadi bottom, where the width of the wadi is approximately 200 m across. The height of this point is ~215 m above sea level (at least 10 m higher than the top of the dam!).
A similar story can be constructed for the pictures of the lower dam in the right column. The dams were minor inconveniences to the flow of the total volume of the storm water.
The Wadi Derna drains a large and relatively barren plateau with some of the weirdest landforms I have seen, and could possibly be organized so it receives large volumes of water from a number of subsidiary drainages at the same time. Or, more likely, the insanely hot Mediterranean air was supersaturated with water, and the storm dynamics led to rapid cooling that squeezed all of the water out over a very short period of time….. And the barren plateau lacked soil and vegetation to slow the flow of the water once it hit the ground, and simply demonstrated what can happen when the Earth System has too much energy to dissipate all at once in the form of climate catastrophes.
Consequently….
Our planet is progressively becoming uninhabitable!
Not yet getting back to anything as cool as last year’s near record highs after more than 3 months! – https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/?dm_id=world3+ months and the anomaly is still trending ever more extreme as the sub-solar point moves towards the Southern Hemisphere!Global Average Sea Surface Temperature still above previous years ALL TIME RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE with trend line still widening the gap. 90% of excess solar heat is first absorbed into the oceans to heat the globe as a whole. – https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/Southern Hemisphere anomaly also in record extreme territory and rising rapidly. Antarctic rising and ~1 day from record daily high.Sept. 13 and Antarctic sea ice already beginning to melt after 4+ months of record low freezing rate, to create a global average record low amounts of sea ice. At the southern summer low to come will there be ANY sea ice left around Antarctica? What does this mean for ice shelves and glacier fronts exposed to warm pounding waves and tides? – https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/Sept. 19 and the ice is rapidly melting into ever more extreme low sea ice for the date.Sept 19 and rapid Antarctic melting keeps global coverage more than 4 σ below any previous low for the date. Not good news for southern summer! https://seaice.visuals.earth/ Record high temperatures & reduced temperatures between polar and ‘temperate’ zones lead to crazy, weak and chaotic jet streams; in turn allowing stalled extreme heat domes, droughts and wildfires; lethally moist air masses, biblical flooding, and catastrophic storms. OUR GOVERNMENTS ARE STILL PROMOTING AND SUBSIDIZING FOSSIL FUEL BURNING!
It’s truly astonishing how hot the North Atlantic was this summer. 2.3F above normal (+1.3C) and about 1F or .5C above records. It may not sound like much but it’s tremendous – This is for a huge area from the equator to the southern tip of Greenland and from Florida to the UK. https://t.co/M6Wapdbo5jpic.twitter.com/D2mj0iKBRy
Leon Simons [Mission: To understand & protect the home planet. Innovator, climate researcher, social entrepreneur. Board member Club of Rome NL], who works outside the ‘reticence’ imposed by the usual academic and institutional employers considers the significance of recent reports on the Earth’s energy imbalance. Note: Simons is a coauthor on at least two peer reviewed scientific reports in this area.
Simons puts the previous graphs in a geological context based on Shackleton et al’s reconstruction of variations of Earth’s energy balance determined from measurements of Oxygen isotope ratios in sediment cores from the seabeds.
The thread from https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1698413266421096893 explains in some detail how the following graph was inferred and extrapolated from the above. At first I found it difficult to make sense of this graph until I grasped that the vertical line defining the right-hand side of the graph was data, comparing the imbalance observed directly over the last 50 years, with the variation recorded over the last 150,000[!] years, not the border….
Simons was one of the coauthors of the above paper.
ERA5 September 2023 monthly data are out.
I'm still struggling to comprehend how a single year can jump so much compared to previous years.
Just by adding the latest data point, the linear warming trend since 1979 increased by 10%. pic.twitter.com/AnNAbyUQwY
Note that the following X-Tweet is limited to the United States – based on a Scientific American article. The rest of the world is suffering at least as much! Total costs are adjusted for inflation. It isn’t clear whether this also applies to the individual “billion dollar” events in the graph below.
Given the rapidly growing accumulation of excess heat in Earth’s oceans, if we cannot stop and reverse global warming within the next few years the inevitable result will be ecological and social collapses, within a few decades, and likely global extinction of most complex organisms — including humans within a century or so….
We must act before it is too late!
Featured Image
Based on an image by Leon Simons, https://twitter.com/LeonSimons8/status/1698410404693594417 depicting the urgent existential problem facing humanity today: If we cannot reverse the heating spike forming the right-hand border of the graph and force it below the neutral line forming the graph’s X axis within a few years, most complex life on Earth will be extinct in a century or so.
Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.
