I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it's been clear

   - The Beatles, 

Meltdown expected, the wheat is growin' thin
Engines stop running, but I have no fear
'Cause London is drowning, and I, I live by the river

   -The Clash

Dates to remember

September 4 CNN Candidate Town Hall on Climate

September 20-27  Climate Strike

Greetings

It was about 100 degrees here yesterday. 

And the Amazon, Siberia, and Indonesia are all on fire 

 So, maybe its a good to think about ice.   The melting ice in Greenland is getting a lot of attention, with good reason

Glaciers just aren't acting the way they should. see here  and here

Now, however, a team of researchers has figured out how to directly probe these melt processes and has tested the method out on one glacier in Alaska. What it found, published this week in Science, is worrying: the glacier is melting far faster than current theories had suggested “The melt rates that we measured were about 10 to 100 times larger than what theory predicted,” says lead study author David A. Sutherland, an oceanographer at the University of Ore

But it's not just the arctic .  In fact, Antarctica is also melting rapidly.

GRADUAL ANTARCTIC SEA ICE INCREASES [HAVE BEEN] FOLLOWED BY DECREASES AT RATES FAR EXCEEDING THE RATES SEEN IN THE ARCTIC

“A newly completed 40-y record of satellite observations is used to quantify changes in Antarctic sea ice coverage since the late 1970s. Sea ice spreads over vast areas and has major impacts on the rest of the climate system, reflecting solar radiation and restricting ocean/atmosphere exchanges. The satellite record reveals that a gradual, decades-long overall increase in Antarctic sea ice extents reversed in 2014, with subsequent rates of decrease in 2014–2017 far exceeding the more widely publicized decay rates experienced in the Arctic. The rapid decreases reduced the Antarctic sea ice extents to their lowest values in the 40-y record, both on a yearly average basis (record low in 2017) and on a monthly basis (record low in February 2017).”

Of course one effect of ice melting is sea level rise.   

Here's a recent presentation on sea-level rise, by John Englander

He makes the point that the melting of the glaciers is now unstoppable.  There is so much heat in the ocean and the air that it is just a matter of time before all melts and the sea rises 120 meters.  We just don't know when. 

 Portland has an elevation of 50 feet, less than 20 meters, Salem is 154 around 30 meters. 

He says he expects around 1 meter by 2050. But who knows?  It moves by fits and starts, slow for a while fast for a while. 

    

And here's a nice summary from Counterpunch

Englander’s key points:

1. Sea level never rises smoothly. It’s not a straight line or a curved line. There are inflection points when it suddenly rises. So far, that has not been experienced. In fact, over the past 100 years, temps are up 1°C and sea-level rise is only up 4 inches.

2. Sea level has been stable, at current levels, throughout human recorded history for 5,000+ years.

3. Thus, it’s very difficult for people to imagine a change in sea level, especially after 5,000 years of rock-solid stability.

Today’s big problem: Sea levels are now (today) at an early stage of exponential growth, meaning, the rate of growth is doubling, cycle-by-cycle, for the first time in known history. Based upon satellite recordings since 1993: sea-level rise 1993-98 +1.5MM/yr. 1998-2011 +3.2MM/yr. 2011-2018 5.0MM/yr. That’s nearly double every cycle, which is an exponential function, and it’s trouble, very-very big trouble.

Exponential.   As Professor Al Bartlett has said

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."

So, suppose sea level rise were to double every ten years.  So 5 MM in 2020.  10 MM in 2030. etc   By 2080 its 3 meters. 2100 its 12 meters. Portland goes under in 2110, when it hits 24 M

Melting floating ice doesn't affect sea level, but does increase the amount of blue water.  A new study from Scripps tells us the likely impact

Losing the reflective power of Arctic sea ice will lead to warming equivalent to one trillion tons of CO2 and advance the 2ºC threshold by 25 years. Any rational policy would make preventing this a top climate priority for world leaders,” said Ramanathan, a professor of atmospheric and climate sciences at Scripps.

 2 degrees 25 years sooner than currently predicted?  Hmmm...  

This means that after the blue ocean event, temperatures rise quickly.   A recent study has linked sea ice melting to abrupt climate change such as a spike in temperature .

..from this they determined that sea ice changes were massively significant in past climate change events in the North Atlantic. These periods, called Dansgaard-Oeschger events2, are some of the fastest and largest abrupt climate changes ever recorded. During some of these events, Greenland temperatures are likely to have increased by 16 degrees Celsius in less than a decade.

 Here's one scenario that incorporates a blue ocean event.  see here (PDF)

  2030–2050: Emissions peak in 2030, and start to fall consistent with an 80 percent reduction in fossil-fuel energy intensity by 2100 compared to 2010 energy intensity. This leads to warming of 2.4°C by 2050, consistent with the Xu and Ramanathan “baseline-fast” scenario. However, another 0.6°C of warming occurs  taking the total to 3°C by 2050 — due to the activation of a number of carbon-cycle feedbacks and higher levels of ice albedo and cloud feedbacks than current models assume. [It should be noted that this is far from an extreme scenario: the low-probability, high-impact warming (five percent probability) can exceed 3.5–4°C by 2050 in the Xu and Ramanathan scheme.]   

You can track air  temperature  rising here.   As you can see the same issue of exponential curve arises here.

According to this smoothed estimate, the trend — which is where we look for climate change (man-made or not) — has shown two episodes of warming since the year 1900. The first, from about 1910 to 1945, it rose roughly 0.43°C, while from about 1975 to now it has risen around 0.84°C. That’s basically twice as much.

So, when will we see a blue ocean event ?  

Current models say between 2030 and 3050,  closer to  2030 being more likely

So, whats the plan?

Dave Roberts put out a nice post explaining that what it will take is not evolutionary but revolutionary.  No pain no gain.  He says

"The facts of climate change mean that there is no such thing as a 'moderate' position on it. You do the radical things necessary to meet IPCC targets or you sit back & let radical impacts unfold."

"Most Americans say they want the U.S. to take “aggressive” action to stop climate change, yet only a minority would put up with even small increases in their taxes or electricity bills to do so.

Bernie's Green New Deal.?  $ 16 trillion

Hmmm......

So, its probably going to get hotter

 For a view into our future see  "Can we survive extreme heat?" . here.  " It starts with a blackout "  

“Hurricane Katrina caused a cascading failure of urban infrastructure in New Orleans that no one really predicted,” Chester explains. “Levees broke. People were stranded. Rescue operations failed. Extreme heat could lead to a similar cascading failure in Phoenix, exposing vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the region’s infrastructure that are difficult to foresee.”

In Chester’s view, a Phoenix heat catastrophe begins with a blackout. It could be triggered any number of ways. During periods of extreme heat, power demand surges, straining the system. Inevitably, something will fail. A wildfire will knock out a power line. A substation will blow. A hacker might crash the grid. In 2011, a utility worker doing routine maintenance near Yuma knocked out a 500-kilovolt power line that shut off power to millions of people for up to 12 hours, including virtually the entire city of San Diego, causing economic losses of $100 million. A major blackout in Phoenix could easily cost much more, says Chester.

But it’s not just about money. When the city goes dark, the order and convenience of modern life begin to fray. Without air conditioning, temperatures in homes and office buildings soar. (Ironically, new, energy-efficient buildings are tightly sealed, making them dangerous heat traps.) Traffic signals go out. Highways gridlock with people fleeing the city. Without power, gas pumps don’t work, leaving vehicles stranded with empty tanks. Water pipes crack from the heat, and water pumps fail, leaving people scrounging for fresh water. Hospitals overflow with people suffering from heat exhaustion and heatstroke. If there are wildfires, the air will become hazy and difficult to breathe. If a blackout during extreme heat continues for long, rioting, looting, and arson could begin.

Torn between two lovers

We are just prisoners

Of our own device

  -  The Eagles

Did you ever have to make up your mind

To pick up on one and leave the other behind

   -John Sebastian

Greetings

     The monkey Trap

    

         There are two recent climate change controversies that are sucking up lots of energy.  To my mind they both seem to be missing the point .   The first is over the Jacobson 100% renewable plan   and it's feasibility or lack thereof,  it has spawned an acrimonious debate in the relevant journals.  e.g. see here

        Richard Heinberg offers an intelligent commentary, noting that both sides seem to have accepted the premise that it is even possible to rebuild our modern society to run on renewables.. Based on his own research, has serious doubts.  He says:

"When we start our transition planning by assuming that future Americans will use as much energy as we do now (or even more of it in the case of economic growth), then we have set up conditions that are nearly impossible to design for. And crucially, that conclusion still holds if we add nuclear power (which is expensive and risky) or fossil fuels (which are rapidly depleting) to the mix. The only realistic energy future that David Fridley and I were able to envision is one in which people in currently industrialized countries use far less energy per capita, use it much more efficiently, and use it when it’s available rather than demanding 24/7/365 energy services. That would mean not doing a lot of things we are currently doing (e.g., traveling in commercial aircraft), doing them on a much smaller scale (e.g., getting used to living in smaller spaces and buying fewer consumer products—and ones built to be endlessly repaired), or doing them very differently (e.g., constructing buildings and roads with local natural materials).

  

                He may be wrong , he may be right.  What I find interesting is that question itself is never discussed.  Because, perhaps, it is inconceivable that things must change.

                 A more recent flap has arisen about the article by science writer David Wallace Wells,   about what the world will look like if (when?) we don't make big changes .   see The Uninhabitable Earth  .  Many commenters suggested it was "too doomerish"  and didn't offer enough hope that we would make the necessary changes  . And it is true, the article didn't pull any punches.  I urge to read it yourselves.  Here is short quote to give you a feel for it .

"The present tense of climate change — the destruction we’ve already baked into our future — is horrifying enough. Most people talk as if Miami and Bangladesh still have a chance of surviving; most of the scientists I spoke with assume we’ll lose them within the century, even if we stop burning fossil fuel in the next decade. Two degrees of warming used to be considered the threshold of catastrophe: tens of millions of climate refugees unleashed upon an unprepared world. Now two degrees is our goal, per the Paris climate accords, and experts give us only slim odds of hitting it. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issues serial reports, often called the “gold standard” of climate research; the most recent one projects us to hit four degrees of warming by the beginning of the next century, should we stay the present course. But that’s just a median projection. The upper end of the probability curve runs as high as eight degrees — and the authors still haven’t figured out how to deal with that permafrost melt. The IPCC reports also don’t fully account for the albedo effect (less ice means less reflected and more absorbed sunlight, hence more warming); more cloud cover (which traps heat); or the dieback of forests and other flora (which extract carbon from the atmosphere). Each of these promises to accelerate warming, and the geological record shows that temperature can shift as much as ten degrees or more in a single decade. The last time the planet was even four degrees warmer, Peter Brannen points out in The Ends of the World, his new history of the planet’s major extinction events, the oceans were hundreds of feet higher.*

              Too doomerish?        Dave Roberts responded to the controversy saying:  " Did that New York Magazine story freak you out? Good"  .   He suggests that the article is basically accurate and is just what is needed to get people to realize how serious the situation is.   (Note:   Wallace Wells has responded to his critics in an "annotated " version of the article, carefully footnoting his sources  see here)

 

         But, to me the more relevant question is," if we need to hold out hope -  hope for what?"    Hope  that we can continue to  have more growth, more stuff, and more high energy life styles?  As well as an intact biosphere?    If that's what we are hoping for, we will probably be disappointed.  Roger Boyd in his blog Humanity's Test, argues that it's time for us to recognize that growth and sustainability are not reconcilable. He offers a number flaws in the view that we can have growth and sustainability -  including.his view that there is no remaining carbon budget because of  

"The high probability of increases in natural emissions from forests, soils, permafrost etc. that will offset part of any human emission cuts

• The probability that climate sensitivity is at least at the high end of the range used by the UN IPCC, and possibly higher than that range
• The impact of an ice-free Arctic, as the reduction in albedo leads to energy balance of the Earth being significantly increased
• The probability that sea level rise is much more sensitive to temperatures than previously assumed

             He also, offers a good explanation for the reason that all politicians and nearly all policy wonks refuse to consider the possibility that future growth must be curbed .

       

"The politicians understand the Pandora’s Box that will open up once they cross the Rubicon into acceptance of a period of degrowth. The horrors that sit within that box include:

• A large-scale reduction in wealth, as much of that wealth represents the current value of future growth.
  • Share prices based on assumed rates of future profit growth
  • Loans based upon the assumption that future growth will provide the income to pay off the principal and interest

• A financial system crash as the assets on the books of banks and other financial intermediaries lose significant amounts of value

• A need for the rich to share their wealth and income with the less rich
  • Without the additional income produced by growth, the only way for the less rich to improve their lot will be by redistribution from the wealthy through such things as progressive taxation (higher taxes on the rich) and higher wages. This will be both within countries, and between countries.

• A reduction in pensions and a reorientation toward public provision. The whole pension industry relies on future growth in asset prices to provide the majority of the funds required to pay future pensions.

  

      So, yes, we are "torn between to love(r)s."   The love of our riches and the goodies that implies , and our love of a future .  In a more recent article by Dave Roberts  The Best way to reduce your personal carbon emissions : don't be rich he notes a that a recent study evaluated a number of personal choices in terms of their impact, and he concludes:

"As you can see, your lightbulbs and laundry verge on meaningless, carbon-wise. The only “high-impact” actions are ditching your car, flying less, switching to a plant-based diet, and, the biggie, not having a child."

    He also includes this graphic from Oxfam - which is pretty telling.  

  

NRC: "We're already seeing abrupt impacts"

Greetings

     This is kind of a good news - bad news story.  The National Research Council recently  issued its final report "Abrupt Climate Change"  .  (The study is 220 pages long , and it looks like you can read it on line, though you may need to be a member of the National Academy of Science to download it). 

    The authors held a briefing last Friday.  The good news is that they are convinced that methane gun will not go off in the near future.   So that's nice.  Similarly the West Antarctic Sheet will be OK for a while, likewise the North Atlantic circulation flows.  At least for 100 years.  That sounds good.  Other news was a little less good.

 "In one of the most shocking statements, Barnosky said the world's oceans are now undergoing a change in pH and temperature that is so rapid and severe, that if we stay on our business-as-usual emissions pathway, then we will see the most significant degradation in the world's oceans since 250 million years ago when there was the “end-Permian extinction event.” That was possibly the most extreme extinction event in Earth's entire history. Over 90% of marine species in the fossil record went extinct.

        “Just in the next five or six decades we will see some very major problems,” Barnosky said. 

        Today, the change in temperature of the ocean is primarily being caused by the growing global energy imbalance resulting from the thickening blanket of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide.

        The change in pH of the ocean is primarily being caused by the growing global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, which becomes an acid, carbonic acid, when it dissolves in water. As the methane clathrates increasingly thaw, they will also acidify the water.

        On extinction more broadly, Barnosky said that tropical coral reefs and land species in the tropics are first in line for extinction. And coral reefs will disappear in decades on our current emissions path as well. “These are not small effects and again - we're already starting to see them happen.”

    Here another review from the Yale Climate Media Forum 

“We’re already seeing abrupt impacts, and we’re going to see more,” Barnosky said at the November 3 briefing releasing the new study. He pointed to “a dramatic stair step” in the increase in fires across the American West over the past 25 years and said, “We’re already at that new normal,” with an expectation of more and more fires “on the horizon with very high confidence.”

From : Fairfax Climate Watch

« Expect More Frequent Extreme Cold (and Hot) Weather | Main

Global Climate Change Less Terrifying, More Horrifying

By Matt Owens        January 11, 2014

 

         Above: modeled global average temperature with business as usual emissions.

        Less terrifying, more horrifying. That, more or less, was the between-the-lines takeaway from Friday's National Research Council (NRC) briefing on abrupt climate change.

        The event was part of an announcement of the NRC's newly released and finalized report, “Abrupt Impacts of Climate Change: Anticipating Surprises.”

        Several of the scientists involved in the report were present, including James White from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Anthony Barnosky from the University of California at Berkeley, and Richard Alley from Penn State University.

        In one of the most shocking statements, Barnosky said the world's oceans are now undergoing a change in pH and temperature that is so rapid and severe, that if we stay on our business-as-usual emissions pathway, then we will see the most significant degradation in the world's oceans since 250 million years ago when there was the “end-Permian extinction event.” That was possibly the most extreme extinction event in Earth's entire history. Over 90% of marine species in the fossil record went extinct.

        “Just in the next five or six decades we will see some very major problems,” Barnosky said. 

        Today, the change in temperature of the ocean is primarily being caused by the growing global energy imbalance resulting from the thickening blanket of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide.

        The change in pH of the ocean is primarily being caused by the growing global atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, which becomes an acid, carbonic acid, when it dissolves in water. As the methane clathrates increasingly thaw, they will also acidify the water.

        On extinction more broadly, Barnosky said that tropical coral reefs and land species in the tropics are first in line for extinction. And coral reefs will disappear in decades on our current emissions path as well. “These are not small effects and again - we're already starting to see them happen.”

        All participants, even Barnosky himself, seemed to be stunned by the details and implications being presented.

        Richard Alley made an effort to shore up morale by pointing to some of the massive and abrupt catastrophes we can essentially rule out now. “North Atlantic [ocean circulation] probably will not change abruptly,” he said, and there is “fairly high” confidence in that outlook. However, he added, circulation will change, and probably already is changing - but it just won't “shut down” like some had worried. At least not this century.

        On the topic of amplifying feedbacks, Alley said that “if we warm the world, nature will amplify what we do.” And he added that “often long-term feedbacks are ignored - and so you get optimistic projections of how much carbon we can emit.”

        Asked about the feasibility of “going back” after crossing tipping points, Alley said that it depends on the tipping point. In the case of the Arctic sea ice, if we cool the planet back down to temperatures a little below today's, then we can probably regrow the sea ice he said, adding that on the other hand, if West Antarctica collapses, then the temperature would have to drop much further to start the ice sheet growing again. As for Greenland, the ability “to return” depends on how long the climate remains in a warm state. The longer it's warm, the harder it will be to “return” he said.

        Alley didn't get into how we might cool the planet back down, although in previous public statements, he has referred to carbon dioxide as being something like a global temperature dial. Also in reference to “returning,” he mentioned hysteresis loops, a trait of some complex systems where returning to the previous state requires following a different path back. Sometimes the return path can be more difficult too.

        In other less-terrifying but still-horrifying news, Alley described how - as best he can tell - there do seem to be enough “safety valves” on sea floor methane clathrate deposits to limit its release - but it will still be a chronic problem - rather than the massive “clathrate gun” possibility (where the methane erupts from the oceans so fast that global temperatures spike and essentially a massive ecological upheaval ensues with wildfires, famines, and so on).

        Unfortunately, both the clathrates and thawing Arctic permafrost will become significant sources of ongoing greenhouse gases, at least if we stay on our current emissions path. That means to stabilize climate in the future, we'll need to do more than just stop burning fossil fuels. We'll also need to mop up the permafrost and clathrate emissions. And, with elevated chronic bubbling of methane from the sea floor, it will also acidify the ocean from the bottom up.

        Regarding a possible collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Alley said he's inclined to say it's not terribly likely this century. And, if it does happen, he's leaning towards it being a somewhat slow process. But there are still processes involved where there just isn't enough information yet - and so he won't fully rule out something more rapid.

        Jim White highlighted that a previous NRC report (2004) on abrupt climate change was the first time anyone had even looked at the issue in a systematic way. And he added that “calls to action” from that 2004 report have largely gone unheeded thus far.

        Early in his presentation, White alluded to food storage as one possible safeguard against increasingly hostile weather and crop shortfalls, but he didn't go into much detail. The global food system is quite remarkable in how little reserve is stored at any given time. Even without climate change, it seems like a significant crop shortage could put many countries, even developed ones, into a world of hurt.

        In response to a question on tipping points in our built systems, White answered that there has been no comprehensive assessment to see how our infrastructure will hold up to climate change. The first step he said, is to identify “what you have at risk,” but that has generally not been done. For example, he cited how it took Hurricane Sandy hitting New York and New Jersey before there was a serious evaluation of what could be done to safeguard against such an event.

        He also cited Florida, which hasn't had a major storm surge disaster yet - that is, one where the elevated (and rising) sea level makes the surge potentially worse than ever before.

        And White also pointed out that low topographical relief makes it easy for storm surge to push far inland along much of the US Southeast coast.

        Fundamentally, the feeling from the conference was that some very decent and hardworking people have identified a very bad set of circumstances headed towards mankind, and the general reaction has been a human one: shoot the messenger and/or ignore the problem and hope it goes away.

        In the context of this report, that strategy of denial and rejection has sort of worked so far (by a certain logic anyway). After all, a lot of sudden apocalyptic climate change events have been ruled very unlikely with high confidence, at least for another 100 years or so. But the horror of the situation is that very real chronic problems are growing worse. The odds of those chronic problems going away, unfortunately, is about as close to zero as you can get.

        The basic truth between the lines of this press event was that we are facing a world that is becoming increasingly hostile to humankind.

        We are literally making the planet into a wasteland like this is some post-apocalyptic science fiction story. It is just shocking. And the most horrifying aspect of it all is that we've waited to reduce emissions so long that we're exiting the win-win field of possible climate responses. We're now headed into a world of lose-lose. That's the news nobody wants to convey - or hear. But there it is.

Bad Moon Rising

Looks like we're in for nasty weather"

    - John Fogerty

"I've been doing meteorology for 30 years and the jet stream the last three years has done stuff I've never seen," 

   -Jeff Masters, meteorology director at Weather Underground.

We have lost our stable climate. Likely permanently. Rates of change are greatly exceeding anything in the paleorecords. By at least 10x, and more likely >30x. We are heading to a much warmer world. The transition will be brutal for civilization.global-warming

Paul Beckwith

Greetings

      Paul Beckwith is something of an outlier.   He's working on a Phd in Climatology at the University of Ottowa.  He has predicted that the Arctic will be ice free in 2013.  We'll know in about a month.    

    Here's some more of his ideas.

-------------------------------

August 21, 2013

 

Most of us have had that funny feeling that there is something not quite right with our weather and climate recently. We discuss it on FaceBook, mention it to the cashier at the store and maybe even talk about it at the dinner table. Musings like, "Wow the weather sure has been weird lately" and "It's so hot, it has never been this hot before". Every day now (depending on what media outlet you listen to) you will see headlines aboutrecord flooding, record rainfall, record heat, recordstorms, record tornadoes, record fires and recordhurricanes.

"Record" seems to be the new buzz word when we talk about the climate nowadays.

One thing you can rest assured in though is that it reallyis not a figment of your imagination. The climate is indeed changing - and rapidly. So fast that it's startling even climate scientists and blowing previous "computer modelings" out the window.

So what really is going here?

Alot.

When the earth enters into certain periods and reaches certain "tipping points", weather and climate can change very very fast. According to a report by the Pentagon: An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for US National Security, it can change so fast that we can have catastrophic climate change within a period of mere years - a state we call "abrupt climate change". Abrupt climate change comes when those tipping points are reached or surpassed, much like a runway train without brakes or a snowball rolling down a hill at high speed.

In a nutshell, it's a point none of us ever wanted to see in our lifetimes. But the sad reality of it is that we are.

Paul Beckwith, part-time professor and a PhD student with the laboratory for paleoclimatology and climatology at the University of Ottawa, recently had some startling things to say about what's happening to our climate. Beckwith says that we have now entered into a period of "abrupt climate change" and that we can now expect that runaway train to gain even more speed. Because some dangerous feedback loops have been put into action, our jet stream has been affected (think of it like this - the "conveyor belt" on earths air conditioner is now loose and wandering in areas it never has - hence the reason we are seeing mass amounts of rainfall being dumped in very short periods of time in unlucky areas)

Beckwith's statement on where we stand now:

"Abrupt climate change. It is happening today, big time. The northern hemisphere atmospheric circulation system is doing its own thing, without the guidance of a stable jet stream. The jet stream is fractured into meandering and stuck streaked segments, which are hoovering up water vapor and directing it day after day to unlucky localized regions, depositing months or seasons worth of rain in only a few days, turning these locales into water worlds and trashing all infrastructure like houses, roads, train tracks and pipelines and also creating massive sinkholes and catastrophic landslides. And climate change is only getting warmed up.

In the Arctic, methane is coming out of the thawing permafrost. Both on land and under the ocean on the sea floor. The Yedoma permafrost in Siberia is now belching out methane at greatly accelerated rates due to intense warming. The collapsing sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is exposing the open ocean to greatly increased solar absorption and turbulent mixing from wave action due to persistent cyclonic activity. Massive cyclonic activity will trash large portions of the sea ice if positioned to export broken ice via the Fram Strait.

What does it all mean?
We have lost our stable climate. Likely permanently. Rates of change are greatly exceeding anything in the paleorecords. By at least 10x, and more likely >30x. We are heading to a much warmer world. The transition will be brutal for civilization.global-warming

Can we avoid this? Stop it? Probably not. Not with climate reality being suppressed by corporations and their government employees in their relentless push for more and more fossil fuel infrastructure and mining and drilling.

Craziness, in a nutshell. Temperatures over land surfaces in the far north have been consistently over 25 C for weeks, due to persistent high pressure atmospheric blocks, leading to clear skies and unblocked solar exposure. Water temperatures in rivers and streams in the far north have resulted in large fish kills as their ecological mortality thresholds have been exceeded. Many other regions are experiencing strange incidences of animal mortality. Mass migrations of animals towards the poles are occurring on land and sea, at startling rates, in an effort for more hospitable surroundings for survival. Shifting food source distributions is causing even hardier, less vulnerable species to be severely stressed. For example, dolphins are being stranded or dying, birds are dropping out of the sky, and new parasites and bacteria are proliferating with warmer temperatures.

In regions of the world undergoing severe droughts the vegetation and soils are drying and fires are exploding in size, frequency, and severity. Especially hard-hit are large regions of the US southwest, southern Europe, and large swaths of Asia. Who knows if forests that are leveled by fire will eventually be reforested; it all depends on what type of climate establishes in the region.

What about coastal regions around the world and sea levels? Not looking too good for the home team. In 2012 Greenland tossed off about 700 Gt (Gt=billion tons) of sea ice, from both melting and calving. As the ice melts, it is darkening from concentrated contaminants being exposed, from much greater areas of low albedo meltwater pools, and from fresh deposits of black carbon ash from northern forest fires. Even more worrying are ominous signs of increasing movement. GPS sensor anchored to the 3 km thick glaciers hundreds of kms from the coast are registering increased sliding. Meltwater moulins are chewing through the ice from the surface to the bedrock and are transporting heat downward, softening up the ice bonded to the bedrock and allowing sliding. Eventually, large chunks will slide into the ocean causing tsunamis and abrupt sea level rises. Many regions of the sea floor around Greenland are scarred from enormous calving episodes in the past.

Coastal Flooding

On a positive note, this knowledge of our changing climate threat is filtering out to greater numbers of the slumbering public that has been brainwashed into lethargy by the protectors of the status quo. As more and more people see the trees dying in their back yards and their cities and houses and roads buckling under unrelenting torrential rains, they are awaking to the threat. And there will be a threshold crossed and a tipping point reached in human behavior with an understanding of the reality of the risks we face. And finally global concerted action. To slash emissions. And change our ways. And retool our economies and reset our priorities. And not take our planet for granted."

In a leaked report of the latest IPCC report on climate change, much of what Beckwith says is mirrored in the report (the report has not yet been published however - in it's final form it may be subject to being watered down and/or changed)

According to sources close to the report, there are some pretty startling and "terrifying" things about to be revealed: "We're on course to change the planet in a way "unprecedented in hundreds to thousands of years." This is a general statement in the draft report about the consequences of continued greenhouse gas emissions "at or above current rates."

"Unprecedented changes will sweep across planetary systems, ranging from sea level to the acidification of the ocean."

So yes, you were right. The weather is weird and it is changing. The question now is: "Can we do something to stop this runaway train?" or did we already give it enough fuel to go even faster?

Another interesting article here about tipping points and abrupt climate change: The Tipping Point and its Effects: a Global Climate Climate Change Warming Point of No Return,

You can follow Dorsi Diaz on Twitter and also here at HubPages where she publishes articles about climate change and educating through art

     http://www.examiner.com/article/climate-change-disaster-unfolds-we-have-lost-our-stable-climate