Surf The Peak

Some folks are born made to wave the flag
Ooh, they're red, white and blue
And when the band plays "Hail to the chief"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord

-Creedence Clearwater

Citizen ship we got mem'ries
Stateless, they got shame
Cast adrift from the citizen ship
Lifeline denied, exiled this castaway

-Patty Smith

Greetings

I hope you are enjoying this warm weather. Being out in the garden, makes me wonder about what gardening will be like in the future. Of course temperatures will rise. May of 2017 was the second hottest on record See here Check out this as you watch hardiness zones change from 1990 to 2006. Or this

But let's not forget variability . Higher temps are only one side of the problem. This paper from Hansen et al, shows that while the average temperature gets hotter, the range of possible temperature gets wider.

The width of the distribution has doubled since 1951-1980.

Thus, plants not only have to be able to endure hotter temperatures, but a much more variable temperature regime.

Eric Holhaus (weather nerd), reports on the drought in the upper midwest

"There's a quickly worsening drought right now in the upper Midwest. In just the last week, "extreme" drought expanded from 7.7 percent to 25.1 percent of North Dakota, the hardest-hit state. And next week, a multi-day heat wave is on the way. It's expected to reach as high as 107 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the Dakotas, more than 20 degrees above normal.

Why does that matter? For one, it might seriously affect this year's wheat harvest there.

Wheat is humanity's most important grain food source, the United States is the world's largest wheat exporter, and the Dakotas and Montana are now the most important wheat growing region of the United States. Wheat prices have already gone up more than 10 percent in just the past few weeks in response to the drought. This year's American wheat crop is currently rated the worst in 29 years. In large parts of the Dakotas and eastern Montana, spring rains have been less than half of normal. Although this is a worrying development, it doesn't yet directly equate to a major food crisis, though—we won't know that until the harvest is completed in the comping weeks. According to one wheat analyst, "It’s pretty likely that we’ll get high-protein wheat at harvest -- there just won’t be that much of it."

Or this article in Grist

Rain fall coming in extreme bursts instead of evened out and longer, hotter longer heat extremes will take a nasty toll on bushels per acre totals.

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A drought in the Dakotas spells trouble for the U.S. wheat harvest. Farmers in the Upper Midwest got a big dose of bad news Thursday: The extent of the region’s ongoing “extreme” drought has more than tripled in the past week.

Temperatures are expected to reach as high as 107 degrees next week in parts of the Dakotas, more than 20 degrees above normal. In large swaths of the Dakotas and eastern Montana, spring rains have been less than half of normal. On Monday, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum declared a statewide fire and drought emergency.

Here's an interesting article about how farmers are coping. It contains a rather odd sentence, I think

How much farmers will be affected will depend on how much the climate warms, Gepts says. If we stay within 1 to 2 degrees Celsius of current global averages, most farmers will likely be able to grow the same crops by changing their cultivation practices. But if global averages rise 3, 4 or 5 degrees, as many models predict, farmers will have to shift to entirely new crops.

It is interesting that the authors are able to consider the potential rise of 3, 4 or 5 degrees with such equanimity . It may be a little tricky for farmers, but things will be fine for the rest of us?

The author must not have read this report by the World Bank Why a 4 degree C World Must be Avoided

Or this from the Climate News Network

By 2060, around 1.4 bn people could be climate refugees, driven from low-lying coastal cities by sea level rise. By 2100, as the global population may have reached 11bn, there could be 2bn climate refugees

Or this from here

ROME, Jun 7 2017 (IPS) – By 2025 –that’s in less than 8 years from today– 1.8 billion people will experience absolute water scarcity, and two thirds of the world will be living under water-stressed conditions. Now it is feared that advancing drought and deserts, growing water scarcity and decreasing food security may provoke a huge ‘tsunami” of climate refugees and migrants.

No wonder then that a major United Nations Convention calls drought ‘one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.’ See what the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) says in this regard.

Speaking of climate refugees, take a look at this map from the New York Times which should give you an idea of where people are going to me moving from, and where they will be moving to (hint: the PNW).

Interesting study by PSU on climate refugees moving to the Willamette Valley

Is this avoidable? Reduction in use of coal use is presumably good. As long as humans are still in the drivers seat. However, although CO2 emmisoons from fossil fules are flattening, this is not translating into reductions in concentrations. Scientists had thought it was merely an artifact of El Nino, and things would get into line once that was over. However , the problem has persisted in 2017, despite the end of the El Nino. see here

Peerhaps it is like a bathtub with two taps. The human burning of fossil fuels is one, while the natural impacts are another. While human emmsiosn slow, with other factors increase?

ill human emissions continue to stay flat? See this from the New York Times

When China halted plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants this year, even as President Trump vowed to “bring back coal” in America, the contrast seemed to confirm Beijing’s new role as a leader in the fight against climate change.

But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.

These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal, according to tallies compiled by Urgewald, an environmental group based in Berlin. Many of the plants are in China, but by capacity, roughly a fifth of these new coal power stations are in other countries.

Crunch Time?

A recent letter in Nature suggest that we have three years to put emissions onto a negative slope.

11:38 PM · Jun 28, 2017

But the idea that there is really any carbon budget left is questionable. Many non-human sources of CO2 or heat have begun to play a more significant role in warming.See The Evidence Against the Existence of a Positive Carbon Budget

See for instance this article on subsea permafrost

new scientific paper published in Nature Communication Journal demonstrates that the mechanisms of destabilisation of subsea permafrost, contrary to previous claims, provide new insights into increased emissions from the worlds largest deposits of methane, that exists in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS).

The subsea permafrost has for thousands of years acted as a seal, restricting the flow of gas through the water column to the atmosphere. This paper clearly shows that permafrost degradation and the occurrence of gas migration pathways are key factors in controlling the emissions.

Or this article on soil carbon

A new Yale-led study in the journal Nature finds that warming will drive the loss of at least 55 trillion kilograms of carbon from the soil by mid-century, or about 17% more than the projected emissions due to human-related activities during that period. That would be roughly the equivalent of adding to the planet another industrialized country the size of the United States.

Critically, the researchers found that carbon losses will be greatest in the world’s colder places, at high latitudes, locations that had largely been missing from previous research. In those regions, massive stocks of carbon have built up over thousands of years and slow microbial activity has kept them relatively secure.

Something to think about as weatch the "bombs bursting in air"

Here's one opportunity help out those folks who have had to leave their homes

http://salemforrefugees.org/

Labels: agriculture, climate, drought, refugee

Where you gunna run to to?

where you gunna go?

Jimmi Hendrix (Hey Joe)

No where to run to

No where to hide

Martha and Vandellas

Greetings

I recently saw that a UN expert noted that if the drought continues, Californanians may have to leave.

"Civilizations in the past have had to migrate out of areas of drought," said Lynn Wilson, who serves on the U.N.'s climate change delegation, told CNBC. "We may have to migrate people out of California."

But where would they go? The Northwest may look pretty good, compared to some places. On the other hand, the Cascadian subduction zone "big one", is over due.

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http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2014/07/will-pacific-northwest-be-climate.html

Will the Pacific Northwest be a Climate Refuge Under Global Warming?

As global warming takes hold later in the century, where will be the best place in the lower 48 states to escape its worst effects?

A compelling case can be made that the Pacific Northwest will be one of the best places to live as the earth warms. A potential climate refuge.

Let's analyze this important question.

I will start with a clean map and highlight problematic areas as the climate warms.

Sea Level Rise

Low-lying coastal areas will be vulnerable as sea-level rises 1-2 feet during the next 85 years. Based on USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) publications (for example, the USGS threat maps below), I have indicated problematic locations in red. Forget Florida.

Red areas indicates regions that will experience substantial negative impacts of global warming from sea level rise

Water Availability

Climate models are emphatic that the SW U.S. will get less precipitation and evaporation will increase as the temperature increases. This will substantially reduce water availability for agricultural and other uses (see figure for the situation in 2050 that is in the recent U.S. National Climate Assessment). Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, eastern Colorado, Nebraska and Florida are also heavily impacted.

Based on this document and others, I have marked up the U.S. map with yellow to indicate areas that will be highly stressed for water.

Hurricanes and Tropical Storms

Although the latest research does not suggest that the number of hurricanes will increase, much of the literature is emphatic the the most intensive hurricanes will get considerably worse. The regions influenced by hurricanes should not change much, as illustrated by the150-year hurricane track climatology (see graphic). The SE U.S. and the East Coast are most threatened, and I note that more severe hurricanes can cause both increased storm surge damage along the coast and heavy

precipitation/flooding in in the interior. I have marked (in orange) additional locations that might be significantly affected by hurricanes.

Heat Waves

Heat wave can be big killers, particularly for the elderly. Here is the temperature change maps from the latest U.S. Climate Assessment

The interior of the continent really heats up, with the West Coast moderated by the cool Pacific Ocean. So, in the U.S. map I have put purple dots for the blank locations with substantial heat wave risk.

Other Issues

With warming temperatures, the atmosphere will hold more water vapor, potentially leading to more precipitation. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) notes considerable uncertainty on the distribution of resulting flooding, but the U.S. National Assessment notes that the biggest increases during the contemporary period has been in the Midwest (see graphic).

My own research has suggested that atmospheric rivers could be enhanced under global warming, which might result in increased flooding, but only near major rivers draining western U.S. mountains. To denote that risk I will put a few green dots on the map. No issue for Seattle assuming the Howard Hansen dam is properly maintained.

There are many other, more minor, issues that I won't deal with here. According to the U.S. National Climate Assessment, ticks capable of transmitting Lyme's disease could become far more prevalent in the Midwest under global warming (see graphic)

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So what conclusion does one inevitably reach by studying the IPCC reports, the U.S. Climate Assessment, and the climate literature?

The Northwest is the place to be during global warming.

Temperatures will rise more slowly than most of the nation due to the Pacific Ocean (see below)
We will have plenty of precipitation, although the amount falling as snow will decline (will fall as rain instead). But we can deal with that by building more reservoir and dam capacity (and some folks on the eastern slopes of the Cascades have proposed to do exactly that).
The Pacific Ocean will keep heat waves in check and we don't get hurricanes.
Sea level rise is less of a problem for us due to our substantial terrain and the general elevation rise of our shorelines. Furthermore, some of our land is actually RISING relatively to the sea level because we are still recovering from the last ice age (the heavy ice sheets pushed the land down and now it is still rebounding).
There is no indication that our major storms...cyclone-based winds (like the Columbus Day Storm)... will increase under global warming.
Increased precipitation may produce more flooding, but that will be limited to river valleys and can be planned for with better river management and zoning.

Temperature of the eastern Pacific, which controls Northwest weather, have been COOLING the last 35 years (blue color)

Several media outlets have noted that the Northwest and its principal city, Seattle, should be particularly good places to ride out a warming planet. Here is an example: