Signs From Earth

Linking Population and Carbon Emissions: Breathing Earth

Designer David Bleja has produced Breathing Earth, an animated map of the earth showing simulated realtime carbon emissions and birth and death rates. With data from the CIA World Factbook and the UN Statistics Division he has produced a country-by-country look at population, carbon emissions, and per person carbon emissions.

For example, United States residents produce 19.66 tons (give or take) of carbon pollution per person per year. Residents of China produce about 3.7 tons annually, and Indians produce 1.17 tons each. He points to a "land footprint" calculator from Global Footprint Network to help understand how much land area each of us needs to support our "lifestyle."

Linking population growth and carbon emissions occurs more frequently now. According to a July 24 posting at The New Security Beat, "Clinton, Congress Link Family Planning, Climate Change," U.S Secretary of State Clinton recently realized the population-climate link at a forum in India:

"“One of the participants pointed out that it's rather odd to talk about climate change and what we must do to stop and prevent the ill effects without talking about population and family planning. That was an incredibly important point. And yet, we talk about these things in very separate and often unconnected ways," said Clinton.

Global Temperature Trends for First Half of 2009

A page on NOAA's National Climatic Data Center website called "Climate of 2009-June in Historical Perspective" has buried within it this map above showing global temperature trends for the first half of 2009. 

The red dots show warmer than normal, the blue dots show cooler. Except for an area in Canada and a few places in the oceans, the color is all red. The size of dots matters: Large red dots indicate temperature "anomalies" from 4 to 5 degrees C (7.2 to 9 degrees F) higher than normal, and they dominate areas of Asia, central Africa, Europe, the southern United States, and southern Greenland.

NOAA also reports that global ocean surface temperatures for June are higher than ever recorded in more than a century of record-keeping, and its Coral Reef Watch group reports that Caribbean coral reefs are vulnerable to significant bleaching this year from thermal stress. The chart at right shows the Caribbean areas most vulnerable (click to enlarge).

The National Snow and Ice Data Center continues to track the summer melting of Arctic ice, and on July 22 reported that 2009 melting is now slightly more significant than last year, which was the second largest on record behind 2007. The light blue line on the chart below shows the area of remaining Arctic ice as of July 21. Ice has been disappearing at the rate of about 37,000 square miles a day in the first half of July.

More Permafrost, More Potential Warming

Frozen soil sediment deposit in Siberia. Photo: Edward A.G. Schuur

The Global Carbon Project has released a new study that indicates northern hemisphere land areas contain about twice the permafrost previously thought, and melting of this permafrost could significantly accelerate the impacts of global warming.

Permafrost is carbon-rich frozen ground that covers vast areas of northern Asia, Europe, North America. Frozen for centuries, it is beginning to thaw and produce greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide. 

As more greenhouse gases from fossil fuel burning heat the atmosphere, more permafrost thaws. As permafrost thaws, it too emits its own share of greenhouse gases methane and carbon dioxide. A key concern of scientists is that thawing permafrost will further increase the rate of planet heating already underway driven our burning of fossil fuels coal, oil, and natural gas. 

This "feedback" process, where rising temperatures beget even more rising temperatures, is one of the great unknowns in climate research. Will we see runaway temperature increases as permafrost melts and adds even more methane and carbon dioxide to the atmosphere?

Global Carbon Project: Soil Organic Carbon Pools in the Northern Circumpolar Permafrost Region

Arctic Melt Season "In High Gear"

The blue line shows Arctic Ocean sea ice extent on July 5. Graphic from NSIDC.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center on July 6 released updated information on the melting trends of Arctic Ocean sea ice for the summer of 2009. The area of sea ice is tracking below the 1979-2000 average, is not as severe as for the record year of 2007, but is in league with that melt year. 

Further details are available at the NSIDC website. NSIDC said in its July 6 Twitter feed, "In midst of melt season, atmospheric patterns look like 2007, but so far we don't see the same rapid melt."

 

Earth's Rainfall Creeps North

Map shows band of heaviest rainfall across the Pacific Ocean, which research indicates is moving north about a mile per year. Credit: University of Washington

Eurekalert reports on research: Earth's most prominent rainfall feature creeping northward

University of Washington research published in Nature Geoscience indicates rainfall is moving north away from the equator, and has been doing so for centuries, probably because of rising temperatures most likely driven by increased solar irradiance since the Little Ice Age of the last millennium.

"The rain band near the equator that determines the supply of freshwater to nearly a billion people throughout the tropics and subtropics has been creeping north for more than 300 years. If the band continues to migrate at just less than a mile a year, which is the average for all the years it has been moving north, then some Pacific islands near the equator may be starved of freshwater by midcentury or sooner."

The broader concern expressed by researchers is that future northward movement of the rain band in the tropics could potentially be driven by rising levels of greenhouse gases with resulting "profound implications for the societies and economies that depend on it."

Nature Geoscience: Southward Movement of Pacific Intertropical Convergence Zone AD 1400-1850

Dust on Colorado Snow Looms Over Mountainfilm

 

Dust-laden snow May 19 on Rocky Mountain peaks south of Montrose, Colorado. Photo: Dennis DImick (click to enlarge.)

I've been in Colorado the past few days, participating in a symposium on food at Mountainfilm Telluride. Last year we discussed water, and energy was our focus in in 2007. Among speakers this year were writer Bill McKibben, soil scientist Jerry Glover of the Land Institute, plant geneticist Pam Ronald of UC-Davis, and Roz Naylor, who heads the food security and environment program at Stanford. A report on the forum from the Telluride Daily Planet is here: The Future of Food: Daunting but Doable.

The film Food,Inc., shown at the festival and scheduled for nationwide release in June, will get some attention here soon. Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns also premiered his elegant new 12-hour film on the National Parks at Mountainfilm. The series will air on PBS this fall.

One scene repeatedly mentioned indoors was on colorful display outdoors in the mountains above this southwest Colorado town. The snowpack, or what remains of it, looks pink. The color comes from repeated dust storms this past winter and spring. 

Red-colored dust arrived as clouds from repeated blow-ups in the red rock areas of Utah and Arizona. The dust darkens snow and increases its melt rate. Early snowmelt and runoff from the mountains reduces the amount of water available in streams later in summer for irrigation and other uses.

The impact of dust on snow has gotten some attention in the scientific community. A study two years ago by the National Snow and Ice Data Center indicated that rising temperatures across the West are increasing the likelihood that dust storms will become more frequent, shorten the snowpack season, and affect timing of runoff in rivers and soil moisture in the mountains. The water will come off the mountains earier in the spring, and mountains soils will dry up sooner in the summer.

April 3, 2009 dust storm in northeast Arizona. From NASA Earth Observatory.

References:

Yukon River Ice Jam Slams Alaska Village

 

Remains of Eagle Village on the Yukon River in eastern Alaska after rapid ice breakup in early May 2009. Photos by Carl Stapler/National Park Service.

Amazing pictures and reports coming out of Eagle, Alaska, on the Canadian border after temperatures jumped into the 70's this week and caused dramatic and rapid breakup of ice on the Yukon River. (Eagle was prominent in the John McPhee book Coming into the Country.) 

Reports have it that much of the old town, Eagle Village, was destroyed by ice melt, that "house sized chunks of ice lifted houses off their foundations" and sent them down the river. 

The Anchorage Daily News: Find more photos, local blog reports and news stories.

NPR: 'Tsunami' Of Ice Wreaks Havoc On Alaskan Town

Moving Geoengineering From the Shadows

 Mount Pinatubo's 1991 eruption in the Phillippines injected sulfates into the atmosphere and cooled the earth. One geoengineering scheme would potentially replicate the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions. Photo: D. Harlow, USGS.

Would massive crop failures from heat waves and drought in the grain-growing regions of the American midwest be a sufficient reason to intentionally manipulate the atmosphere and cool the earth?

That was the opening question posed by Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford during a recent panel discussion on geoengineering at the Aspen Environment Forum. (Disclosure: I helped organize the session and event.)

This question of "geoengineering" -- whether, when, and how to intentionally change earth's atmosphere -- is poised for more attention as the carbon pollution we unintentionally produce by burning coal and oil keeps rising. As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, they trap more of the sun's reflected radiant energy near the earth and drive up land and ocean temperatures.

And as temperatures go up, droughts already seen in Australia's Murray-Darling basin, or heatwaves that hit Europe in 2003 likely will become the norm, according to scientists such as David Battisti and Rosamond Naylor. Their study published in SCIENCE this year examines the likelihood and potential impact of future heatwaves on food supply as carbon emissions and temperatures rise.

Jamais Cascio, a founder of worldchanging.org and now writing at Open the Future published in early 2009 a very readable and insightful short book on this subject, "Hacking the Earth: Understanding the Consequences of Geoengineering." Cascio lays out the choices and ethical implications of "geoengineering" the atmosphere to control planetary heating.

In theory, several options exist: shoot sulfate particles or millions of light-reflecting disks high into the atmosphere to block the sun; fertilize the oceans with iron to encourage carbon-absorbing phytoplankton blooms; plant millions of trees to absorb carbon; spray seawater into the sky to create heat-reflecting white clouds; and somehow capture and bury carbon already in the sky.

So what to do as our rising carbon emissions heat the planet? Is there any realistic large-scale way to cool earth, or stem the heating? Volcanic eruptions have, and a recent example is the Phillippines' Mount Pinatubo. In 1991 the volcano cooled the earth when its eruptions injected massive amounts of sulfates into the atmosphere, partially blocking the sun. 

Rising Odds for a Hotter World

 

MIT Greenhouse Gamble: No-Policy Case (left) where emissions are not limited, and Policy Case (right) where carbon emissions are limited, indicate likelihood of future temperature increases. The size of a pie slice indicates likelihood.

Scientists at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Climate Change have updated their odds for future temperature increases. 

Called The Greenhouse Gamble, the project calculates the odds of temperature increases by 2100 based on what we do, or don't do, to limit carbon emissions. The project began in 2003, and updated projections released this year see significantly warmer temperatures for earth in the absence of stringent emissions reductions.

If we do nothing, odds are 1 in 11 (9 percent) that average temperatures will rise by 7 degrees C. by 2100. (That's 12.6 degrees F.) So far, we are doing less than nothing as global carbon emissions keep rising at record rates beyond any previous expectation. As we keep on this path the chance is less than 1 in 100 (1 percent) that temperatures will rise less than 3 degrees C. (5.4 degrees F.) Is it getting warm in here?

The longer we wait to cut back carbon emissions the higher future temperatures are likely to get. The 2002 gamble showed that 5 degrees C. was the previous ceiling if emissions continued unabated. 

So now the 2009 gamble tells us the future is going to be warmer than we thought it might be.

Climatologist Stephen Schneider of Stanford uses a fire insurance analogy to help people understand the risk from rising temperatures: Most people have fire insurance on their homes even though few have ever had fires. Reduced carbon emissions would be the equivalent of fire insurance for the earth.

We are looking at odds of 1 in 11 (nine percent) that earth (our house) is going to heat up more than 12 degrees F. by 2100. Essentially the earth we know is going to burn down, we're doing nothing to insure ourselves against this, and at the rate carbon emissions are rising we are in effect throwing gasoline on the fire.

California Keeps Drying Out

Australia isn't the only place suffering from drought. Areas of the Western United States continue to dry out as normal winter rains and mountain snowpacks fail to arrive. The Wall Street Journal reports on the multi-year drought in California threatening farm crops: Shrinking Water Supplies Imperil Farmers

California gets most of its moisture in the winter, and the California Department of Water Resources reports that rainfall is less than 70 percent of normal. Snowpacks that keep reservoirs and streams filled throughout the year are anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of normal.

Reduced water availability for irrigation is causing a reduction in acres planted. This decline in farm production compounds financial stress in Califonia's Central Valley, which already has been suffering from the fallout caused by the banking system collapse.

Los Angeles Times: California farms, vineyards in peril from warming, U.S. energy secretary warns

Signs From Earth: Western Water Worries Intensify

Mapping the Heat Behind Australian Fires

Map of exceptional Australian heatwave as posted Feb. 5 by NASA Earth Observatory. Areas of Victoria state in the southeast are now burning.

Northern Australia is as cool as the south is hot. After heatwaves with sustained temperatures above 110 degrees F., fires are now burning in the south, and now nearly 200 are dead.

The heat and drought conditions have been building for years: temperatures have been rising and precipitation has been in decline. 

These unfolding changes are well-documented by climate scientists. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report discussed the trend towards hotter, drier conditions in portions of Australia in the 11th chapter of its impacts report.

The questions confronting the region are not whether the climate will change but how to respond to a warmer, drier regime, and how to adapt.

Reuters: Fires, floods pressure Australia government on climate

"Scientists said Australia needed to prepare for more extreme weather events due to global warming..."

Reuters: Factbox-Forecast for Australia's climate: Even More Extremes

"Australia has always been a land of weather extremes but scientists say the country will continue to get warmer over the coming decades, with more intense droughts and floods as well as longer fire seasons..."

New York Times: Death Toll in Australian Fires Climbs to 108

The Australian:  A Nation in Mourning

Herald Sun: Flash Map showing locations of fires in Victoria

news.com.au: 134 people dead, 750 homes destroyed in worst fires in Australia's history

This image below posted January 30 from NASA Earth Observatory, shows a large fire in Victoria state on January 29.

 

A Thousand Years of Warming Ahead

Extended and deep droughts will become commonplace, according to a paper published in PNAS. This scene is from Australia, already affected by deep drought. Photo by Raiden256/flickr.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy indicates that we are in for a hot 1,000 years from the effects of planet heating caused by our love affair with hydrocarbon fossil fuels.

Susan Solomon, a lead author for the IPCC 4th Assessment in 2007, co-authored a paper looking at the long-term temperature effects of accumulating carbon dioxide entitled "Irreversible Climate Change Because of Carbon Dioxide Emissions." 

A key point is that the oceans have been soaking up excess heat and CO2 from the atmosphere and masking the atmospheric warming effects. This also has been causing the oceans to warm up and expand as they soak up heat from the atmosphere.

Because the oceans are so good at storing heat, even if we were to stop burning all fossil fuels tomorrow the effects from the heat-trapping atmospheric greenhouse gases will continue for at least a thousand years as the accumulated heat in the oceans slowly dissipates into the atmosphere.

Further, the paper says there will be significant long-term droughts on a scale with historic "dust bowls," and sea level rise will be significant as warm sea water expands and continental glaciers and ice shelves melt.

None of this is new, really, it's just that the 1,000-year timeline for long-term heating effects from our present activities presents a rather dire picture for those who will inherit this situation from us. And there doesn't appear to be any way out as long as we keep burning coal, oil, and gas at such rapid rates.

PNAS Paper Abstract: "The severity of damaging human-induced climate change depends not only on the magnitude of the change but also on the potential for irreversibility. This paper shows that the climate change that is taking place because of increases in carbon dioxide concentration is largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. Following cessation of emissions, removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide decreases radiative forcing, but is largely compensated by slower loss of heat to the ocean, so that atmospheric temperatures do not drop significantly for at least 1,000 years. Among illustrative irreversible impacts that should be expected if atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations increase from current levels near 385 parts per million by volume (ppmv) to a peak of 450–600 ppmv over the coming century are irreversible dry-season rainfall reductions in several regions comparable to those of the ‘‘dust bowl’’ era and inexorable sea level rise. Thermal expansion of the warming ocean provides a conservative lower limit to irreversible global average sea level rise of at least 0.4 –1.0 m if 21st century CO2 concentrations exceed 600 ppmv and 0.6 –1.9 m for peak CO2 concentrations exceeding 1,000 ppmv. Additional contributions from glaciers and ice sheet contributions to future sea level rise are uncertain but may equal or exceed several meters over the next millennium or longer."

NOAA Press Release: New Study Shows Climate Change Largely Irreversible

PNAS Early Edition: Irreversible climate Change Because of Carbon Dioxide Emissions

A recent book by David Archer, a climatologist at the University of Chicago, discusses the long-term effects of atmospheric CO2: The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Climate.

Andrew Revkin, Dot.Earth: The Greenhouse Effect and the Bathtub Effect

New York Times: Emissions Cut Won't Bring Quick Relief, Scientists Say

Washington Post: Long Droughts, Rising Seas Predicted Despite CO2 Curbs

NPR: Global Warming is Irreversible, Study Says

Hot Planet: Our Path Ahead

Chilean Volcano Resumes Eruption

Chile's Chaiten Volcano, silent for 9,000 years, in late January resumed eruptions that began in 2008. This false-color image from NASA's Earth Observatory shows a plume of ash and steam flowing north from a January 19 volcanic dome collapse. The town of Chaiten, heavily damaged from mudflows in the May 2008 eruptions, is on the eastern shore of a small bay below the volcano.

This image from the May 2008 eruption became one of the most popular science images of 2008 according to a viewer poll at MSNBC.

New York Times Slideshow on Chaiten's Latent Threat

New York Times: Fear Lurks in Chile Volcano's Shadow

Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program: Chaiten

Volcanism Blog: Chaiten Update Jan. 21, 2009

Feds: Rapid Climate Change Coming Sooner

The U.S. government, which during the past eight years has spent much energy denying the existence of global warming, muzzling its environmental scientists who study the issue, or suppressing publication of scientific studies about it, appears to be clearing out the shelves in its waning days.

One report just out this week addresses abrupt climate change. This being defined as changes that occur over a period of decades (or less) and lasting for at least that long, and causing "substantial disruptions in human and natural systems." 

Editors say that these changes would pose  "clear risks to society in terms of our ability to adapt," but they say the report does not "focus on specific effects on these systems as a result of climate change." 

We are left to wonder. I guess that means impacts like rising seas that drown coastlines or droughts that cause crop failures and water shortages. For example.

Areas discussed include the increased likelihood of severe drought in the U.S. southwest, increased release of methane from wetlands and permafrost (which would further drive atmospheric warming), a greater rate of sea level rise caused by melting ice sheets and glaciers, and the likely decline of the Gulf Stream, the ocean current that moves warm water from the equator towards the poles. This could mean a decline in temperatures in places such as Europe.

All of these concerns have previously been discussed elsewhere, and this report says it is assessing existing published science. 

It may be that considering the source, the most significant aspect of the report is that it exists at all.

Cliff Notes Version: Summary and Findings and Executive Summary

Columbia University PR via Eurekalert: Abrupt climate shifts may move faster than thought

Soot and Smog Also Climate Culprits

Douglas Fischer at The Daily Climate today explores the results of a published study that indicates ridding the atmosphere of soot and smog can have a quick and beneficial effect on air quality and temperature:

Cleaning the air helps cool planet: Emissions cuts offer 'greatest potential for substantial, simultaneous improvements in local air quality and near-term mitigation.

"Local and state regulators have new ammunition in the fight to justify expensive air pollution rules: Cutting smog and soot has an immediate impact on climate change.

"A study published this week bolsters the link between air quality and climate, finding that across-the-board cuts in air pollution can spur "substantial, simultaneous" improvement in local air quality and near-term mitigation of climate change.

"Trimming smog and soot also represents an alternate and far more immediate global warming solution for regulators stymied by the complexities of other greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences and the lead author of the study..."

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics - Original Study: Climate forcing and air quality change due to regional emissions reductions by economic sector