Scientists to tinker with climate

[Peter1469]

Scientists to tinker with climate

The vast majority of climate models have consistently been off the mark. And scientists think it is a good idea to geoengineer the earth. Arrogance.

As talks aimed at slowing global warming drag on, researchers are pushing new ideas that some are calling last-ditch attempts to avert the worst effects of climate change.


Some proposals are uncontroversial, such as using charcoal to lock carbon dioxide into soil or scattering carbon-absorbing gemstones. Richard Branson, the billionaire chairman of Virgin Group Ltd., has offered a $25 million prize for the best solution in the field known as geoengineering.


Other ideas to cool the planet have scientists worried about unintended consequences. There are proposals, untested at scale and with uncertain costs, to block the sun’s rays with airborne particles or seed the oceans with carbon-absorbing iron. That they’re even being considered reveals both frustration over government inaction and skepticism that policy alone will solve the problem.


“For the last 20 to 30 years, governments, at the back of their minds, have assumed that mitigation is the main way forward,” said Mark Maslin, a fellow at the U.K.’s Royal Geographical Society. Researchers now realize that the planet needs “other urgent ways of dealing with CO2.”

[Common Sense]

Probably not a great idea....

[waltky]

Granny been readin' in Revelation where it says it gonna get hot fer 5 months, den Jesus comin' back...

WMO: Climate Change Causing More Intense, Frequent Heat Waves
July 26, 2016 — The World Meteorological Organization said evidence is growing that links more intense and more frequent heat waves to climate change.

Heat waves that have gripped large parts of the Middle East and central and eastern United States since last week have reached temperatures far exceeding the seasonal averages. The World Meteorological Organization says the blistering 54 degrees Celsius reached Thursday at Mitrabah, Kuwait, is probably the highest ever reached in the Eastern hemisphere and Asia.

A man cools off his dogs on a fountain during a heat wave called 'Heat Dome' in the Manhattan borough of New York

The hottest temperature ever recorded was in Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California at 56.7 degrees Celsius on July 10, 1913. While temperatures elsewhere in the United States have not reached those heights, WMO spokeswoman Claire Nullis said they have soared to 38 degrees Celsius. “That is the actual temperatures," she said. "Once you factor in humidity and how it actually feels to you as a person, the temperatures are even higher. So, we are talking about 43 to 46 degrees.”

Nullis said a unique feature of the U.S. heat wave and that of many others is that the temperatures do not drop much at night. She said this offers little relief from the oppressive heat and can pose serious health risks, especially to the elderly. “Over the past 50 years, hot days, hot nights and heat waves have become more frequent," she said. "We expect them to become more frequent still as this century progresses and this is obviously due to climate change.” The World Meteorological Organization conducted a study last year, which found that many extreme events over the past five years were a result of climate change. In the case of heat waves, the agency says they increased by a factor of 10 or more.

http://www.voanews.com/content/wmo-c...s/3435638.html

[Don]

Scientists to tinker with climate

The vast majority of climate models have consistently been off the mark. And scientists think it is a good idea to geoengineer the earth. Arrogance.

Let them test it on Mars and if that works out, then maybe. Haven't they already been seeding clouds to make rain? There were rumors that cloud seeding helped create the conditions that caused the Big Thompson Canyon flood in Colorado in 1976 that killed about 240 people.

Some Sci Fi writer, maybe Asimov predicted that the day man could accurately predict the weather would be the day man could control the weather.

[waltky]

NASA says July was hottest month on record...

July was hottest month in recorded history, says Nasa
Tuesday 16th August, 2016 - Earth has sweltered through its hottest month in recorded history, according to Nasa.

Even after the fading of a strong El Nino, which raises global temperatures on top of man-made climate change, July broke global temperature records. Nasa calculated that July was 0.84C (1.51F) warmer than the 1950-1980 global average. Chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said that is hotter than the previous top temperatures in July 2011 and July 2015. Scientists blame mostly man-made climate change from the burning of fossil fuel, with an extra jump from the now-gone El Nino, which is a natural temporary warming of parts of the Pacific Ocean that changes weather worldwide.

Georgia Tech climate scientist Kim Cobb said the rise is significant "because global temperatures continue to warm even as a record-breaking El Nino event has finally released its grip". Nasa's five hottest months - in records going back to 1880 - are July 2016, July 2011, July 2015, July 2009 and August 2014. Only July 2015 was during an El Nino. . This is the 10th record hot month in a row, according to Nasa.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which calculates temperatures slightly differently, will come out with its July figures on Wednesday. The NOAA has figured there have been 14 monthly heat records broken in a row, before July. "The scary thing is that we are moving into an era where it will be a surprise when each new month or year isn't one of the hottest on record," said Chris Field, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University. The new record and all the records that have been broken recently tell one cohesive story, said Mr Schmidt, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies: "The planet is getting warmer. It's important for what it tells us about the future."

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/br...-34968312.html

See also:

Melting glaciers pose threat beyond water scarcity: floods
Tuesday 16th August, 2016 -- The tropical glaciers of South America are dying from soot and rising temperatures, threatening water supplies to communities that have depended on them for centuries. But experts say that the slow process measured in inches of glacial retreat per year also can lead to a sudden, dramatic tragedy.

The melting of glaciers like Peru's Pastoruri has put cities like Huaraz, located downslope from the glacier about 55 kilometres away, at risk from what scientists call a "glof" - glacial lake outburst flood. A glof occurs when the weak walls of a mountain valley collapse under the weight of meltwater from a glacier. Recent examples include the rapid draining in 2013 of a lake at Chile's Ventisquero glacier in the Bernardo O'Higgins National Park, six years after another, nearby lake essentially disappeared there.

Those sites are in remote, sparsely populated Patagonia. But if the glacial Palcacocha lake collapsed, it could cause a damaging flood, say experts in Peru, sort of like a smaller, modern cousin of the ancient glof that is thought to have carved the English Channel. "As glaciers disappear around the world, there is less water available for use for hydroelectric power, as a renewable resource for agriculture, for human consumption," said Benjamin Orlove, a professor of international and public affairs at Colombia University in New York. "The glacier retreat also brings many disasters. Entire slopes are destabilized, creating landslides that travel many miles and have destroyed entire towns." Benjamin Morales Arnao, the head of Peru's National Institute for Glacier Research, said that while the country's glaciers "are a source of life, due to their water resources and biodiversity ... these glaciers are also a source of glacial catastrophes." The problem is that glacial lakes are often fragile structures, created when rocks and rubble carried by a glacier form a moraine that dams up its water outflow. The dam can also be created by chunks of a glacier's own ice.

A group of tourists walk backdropped by the "Tuco" glacier in Huascaran National Park, in a tour called "Route of climate change" in Huaraz, Peru

These inherently unstable structures can collapse quickly, especially in a place like Peru that is prone to frequent, violent earthquakes. At a conference last week on the glacier retreat in Peru, Morales Arnao said that Huaraz, a city of about 100,000 people, is particularly at risk from the glacial Palcacocha lake, just 20 kilometre up the mountain above the city, and called for resources to mitigate the risk. In the past, dams, spillways and other waterworks have helped in other places. Massive glofs have occurred regularly in sparsely populated parts of Iceland and other nations. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, a regional intergovernmental research center serving the eight countries of the Himalayas, said that in Nepal - whose proximity to the highest and largest meltwater sources in the world makes it particularly vulnerable - "little attention was paid to the phenomenon until the sudden outburst of the Dig Tsho," a relatively small meltwater lake in the Mount Everest National Park. On Aug. 4, 1985, the lake's moraine dam collapsed, and all its water drained into a downstream valley in four hours, causing losses as far as 50 to 60 kilometres downstream.

Scientists later determined that "a large ice and rock avalanche had cascaded into the lake, creating a wave that spilled over the moraine and caused it to collapse," the center's report said. "It discharged an estimated 6 to 10 million cubic metres of water into the valley below." Digging stone- or cement-lined channels through glacial dams is one solution to the threat. Many moraine dams collapse because meltwater erodes them by seepage or over-topping them. Stopping global warming that is increasingly causing glaciers to melt is another. Experts at the International Forum on Glaciers and Mountain Ecosystems held in Huaraz last week concluded that the world is going to have to plan on melting glaciers, at least for the time being. "The processes of climate change and glacial melting are irreversible," the forum said in its conclusions. "We have to carry out actions to adapt, and mitigate the risks." "The long-term solution is for the world to shift to different energy sources, sources that are renewable, sources that do not emit gases that cause climate change," Orlove said. "In the short term we have to find adaptations, like installing early warning systems for disasters in the most sensitive areas."

http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/melti...oods-1.3030282

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - purt soon won't be no air to breathe - an' den we all gonna die...

Trouble in the Air: Atmospheric CO2 Levels Reach Historic Levels
September 30, 2016 - The level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in our atmosphere may never fall below 400 parts per million (ppm) ever again. That's the headline from a year's worth of test results on CO2 levels from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

In a study released this month, lead author professor Richard Betts of the University of Exeter blames the cyclical Pacific Ocean warming phenomenon known as El Nino in part for the grim record. In his research, published in Nature Climate Change, Betts says El Nino "warms and dries tropical ecosystems, reducing their uptake of carbon, and exacerbating forest fires." Betts and his colleagues were able to predict this landmark. "I was looking at the numbers this morning," NASA scientist Ben Poulter told VOA. "It is remarkable that they were able to make these predictions in 2015." Carbon dioxide is odorless and tasteless, and it makes up less than 1 percent of our atmosphere. But this small amount of CO2 has a big impact on the planet. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, without the warming of the planet that carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases provide, Earth's average temperature would fall below freezing.

Scripps Research Institute numbers show carbon levels at record highs.

But that's where the old saying about too much of a good thing comes into play, because the more carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere, the more heat will be trapped and the warmer the planet will become. The planet didn't reach the 400 ppm mark by itself. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, CO2 levels were at 280 ppm. When tests at Mauna Loa began, the level was at 315 ppm. Scientists say human contributions have played a large part in pushing the level over 400 ppm. All of the carbon people are pumping into the atmosphere is having an impact on the planet. But what exactly is that impact? That's been the challenge facing climate scientists for decades. At the very least, according to NOAA, warming can cause "sea level rise, shifting precipitation patterns, expansion of areas affected by drought, increasing numbers of severe heat waves, and more intense precipitation events."

Changes underway

Already, some places are getting wetter, and some places are getting drier. The good news is that humans are really adaptable. The bad news is that a host of other creatures aren't. And it gets worse: A lot of that excess carbon gets absorbed by the world's oceans, making the water more acidic. NOAA says this interferes with such things as "the ability of marine plants and animals to build their shells," and that ultimately threatens "a reorganization of the entire marine food chain, which could lead to a mass extinction event." But will all this happen? That's the the part that concerns climate scientists the most. Hitting 400 ppm means we're in uncharted territory. The last time atmospheric CO2 levels were this high is unclear, but a number of competing studies put the date at millions of years ago. We may not know whether an extinction event lies ahead, but we can count on weather events like blizzards and droughts becoming more extreme, and more common. Poulter says the 400 ppm level "tells us that society moving way too fast toward dangerous CO2 concentration in the atmosphere." So what can we do to fix it?

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says we have to cap the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at 450 ppm. That keeps us below an average global temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius, which was the goal set at a 2010 U.N. conference on climate change. But to do that, the world may need to phase out use of dirty fuel like coal and cut back on oil. And according to the White House, "global emissions would have to decline by about 60 percent by 2050 [and] industrialized countries' greenhouse gas emissions would have to decline by about 80 percent by 2050." Poulter says, "We're only about 15 to 20 years away from reaching the 450 ppm target," which means efforts to cut carbon emissions have to start now. Forty-one nations — including the world's biggest polluters, the United States, China and those in the European Union — have agreed to reduce their carbon output significantly by 2020. Studies like the one led by Betts can quickly and effectively tell us if the things we are doing to combat climate change are working. "As countries start to implement reduction plans," Poulter says, "we can monitor the effects those reductions are having."

http://www.voanews.com/a/atmospheric...s/3532163.html

[Crepitus]

Scientists to tinker with climate

The vast majority of climate models have consistently been off the mark. And scientists think it is a good idea to geoengineer the earth. Arrogance.

You headline is most misleading. I would suggest people actually read the link to find out what is really happening.




EDIT: I just realized I am the victim of a revived thread. That doesn't mean my comments are incorrect, just that I am replying to dated information.

[waltky]

Granny gets out the willow switch when possum leaves the 'fridge door open...

Freezer failure sees 22,000 years of history evaporate
Tue, Apr 18, 2017 - Within them sits about 80,000 years of history, offering researchers tantalizing clues about climate change and the Earth’s past. At least that was the case — until the precious cache of Arctic ice cores was hit by warming temperatures.

A freezer malfunction at the University of Alberta in Edmonton has melted part of the world’s largest collection of ice cores from the Canadian Arctic, reducing some of the ancient ice into puddles. “For every ice-core facility on the planet, this is their No. 1 nightmare,” glaciologist Martin Sharp said. The ice cores — long cylinders extracted from glaciers — contain trapped gases and particles that offer a glimpse into atmospheric history. “When you lose part of an ice core,” Sharp said. “You lose part of the record of past climates, past environments — an archive of the history of our atmosphere. You just don’t have easy access to information about those past time periods.”

The university had recently acquired the dozen cores, or 1.4km of ice, drilled from five locations in the Canadian Arctic, and carefully transported them from Ottawa to Edmonton. The samples were moved into the university’s brand new, custom-built C$4 million (US$3 million) facility earlier this month. Days later, one of the freezers tripped a high-heat alarm. “The way in which the freezer failed meant that it started to pump heat into the freezer,” Sharp said. “So it wasn’t just a question of it gradually warming up... It was actually quite rapidly raised to a temperature of 40?C.” Sharp rushed to the walk-in storage freezer to survey the damage and found steaming puddles gathered around the millennia-old ice. “It was more like a changing room in a swimming pool than a freezer,” he said.

About 13 percent of the archive had been exposed to high heat, representing more than 180m of ice. None of the cores were completely destroyed. “There are some which are clearly toast and there are others which are not obviously very much affected,” Sharp said. An ice core from the Penny Ice Cap on Baffin Island lost about a third of its mass, amounting to about 22,000 years of history, while a core from Mount Logan, Canada’s tallest mountain, saw 16,000 years melted away. However, much of the collection was unaffected by the malfunction, thanks to a stroke of luck. A television crew had been documenting the ice core move and had asked that the samples be put in a second freezer because the lighting was better. The university complied, storing nearly 90 percent of the collection in an unaffected freezer. “That’s basically what saved us,” Sharp said.

The question is now whether any research can be carried out on the affected cores. “This incident will affect research, no question,” Sharp said. “It rules out certain studies that we might have wanted to conduct on the cores, such as reconstructing continuous long-term histories where parts of the cores have been lost or contaminated.” As returning to the Arctic to replace the damaged ice cores would be a costly endeavor, the focus is now on regularly monitoring and safeguarding the ice cores that are left. “It’s by no means a write-off from a scientific point of view,” Sharp said. “It’s just disappointing to have this happen at all.”

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/worl.../18/2003668960

[waltky]

Florence, Mangkhut and Climate Change: Yes, No and Maybe...

Florence, Mangkhut and Climate Change: Yes, No and Maybe
September 15, 2018 - The seas are angry this month. While the remnants of Hurricane Florence soak the Carolinas and Typhoon Mangkhut pounds the Philippines, three more tropical cyclones are spinning in the Western Hemisphere, and one is petering out over Southeast Asia. Experts say some of this extreme tropical weather is consistent with climate change. But some isn’t. And some is unclear.

It’s unusual to have so many storms happening at once. But not unheard of. “While it is very busy, this has happened a number of times in the past,” said meteorologist Joel Cline at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Mid-September is the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. If there are going to be storms in both hemispheres, Cline said, now is the most likely time.


Stronger storms, and a grain of salt


Scientists are not necessarily expecting more hurricanes with climate change, however. “A lot of studies actually (show) fewer storms overall,” said NOAA climate scientist Tom Knutson. “But one thing they also tend to simulate is slightly stronger storms” and a larger proportion of Category 4 or 5 hurricanes, Knutson said. Florence made landfall as a Category 1 storm but started the week as a Category 4. Knutson and other experts caution that any conclusions linking climate and hurricanes need to be taken with a grain of salt. “Our period of record is too short to be very confident in these sorts of things,” said University of Miami atmospheric scientist Brian McNoldy. While reliable temperature records go back more than a century in much of the world, comprehensive data on hurricanes only starts with satellites in the 1980s.


Extreme rainfall


Scientists are fairly sure that climate change is making extreme rainfall more common. Global warming has raised ocean temperatures, leading to more water evaporating into the atmosphere, and warmer air holds more water. Florence is expected to dump up to 101 centimeters (40 inches) of rain in some spots, leading to what the National Weather Service calls life-threatening flooding. One group of researchers has estimated that half of the rain falling in the hurricane’s wettest areas is because of human-caused climate change. Knutson agrees in principle but can’t vouch for the magnitude. “We do not yet claim that we have detected this increase in hurricane rainfall rate,” he said. He points to earlier studies that blamed climate change for 15 to 20 percent of the devastating rainfall Hurricane Harvey poured on Texas last year.

Waves from Hurricane Florence pound the Bogue Inlet Pier in Emerald Isle, N.C.

However, these studies looked at all kinds of rainfall, not just hurricanes, Knutson notes. “We think that hurricanes are probably behaving like the other types of processes, but we have the best data for extreme precipitation in general,” he explained. The latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report has “medium confidence” in the link between climate change and rainfall extremes. As Florence trudges across the Carolinas, one recent study suggests that hurricanes are moving slower, giving them more time to do their damage. But that may be natural variation more than climate change. “I think we’re still early in the game on that one,” Knutson said.


Rising sea levels