global weirding climate disruption

9/17 belated?

neglected

see chaos

SEE TWO WEATHER

sorta morphing to global warming in general?

see ocean warming

see drought

see flood

see CLIMATE REFUGEE 4 goes back at least to arab spring syria, but official disambig sep category 12/19

omfg see greenland

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10 23 cyclone in yemen 2nd in hist?

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Rare ‘flesh-eating’ bacterium spreads north as oceans warm - Alternet.org

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:{:{omfg}:

guk 6 26 Scientists warn Trump plan to axe US ocean monitoring system will leave world ‘flying blind’ | US news | The Guardian}:

Scientists warn Trump plan to axe US ocean monitoring system will leave world ‘flying blind’

Experts say dismantling the ocean observation system will ‘severely degrade’ the accuracy of weather predictions

Seascape: the state of our oceans is supported by

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About this content

Karen McVeigh

Fri 5 Jun 2026

The Trump administration’s plan to dismantle an ocean observation system vital to understanding the climate crisis and marine ecosystems would “severely degrade” the accuracy of weather predictions and El Niño forecasts, with economic consequences for the US, European and American scientists have warned.

Decommissioning the US system, which plays a major part in a global ocean observation network, would lead to a massive increase in error in the annual estimates of ocean heating rates, according to research published last month.

As a result, the forecasts and early warning systems for storms, tropical cyclones and El Niño would degrade, “sometimes dangerously so”, according to Sabrina Speich, an expert in global ocean monitoring at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris and chair of the ocean expert panel of the Global Climate Observing System.

The Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), run by the US National Science Foundation, is a vast network of seafloor systems, underwater gliders and moored surface platforms that feeds data to researchers, policymakers, educators and mariners worldwide. The initiative, which covers both US coastlines and extends into the North Atlantic and Southern Ocean, has been used to study marine heatwaves, harmful algal blooms, subduction zone earthquakes, ocean acidification and fisheries variability.

Dismantling it would remove a major component of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS), a network of robotic floats, moored buoys and research vessels experts describe as the “eyes and ears” of the ocean. The warning systems based on the data, “save lives”, experts say.

Prescient research published in Nature Climate Change last month showed how data losses in GOOS, a UN-coordinated framework for ocean data for weather and climate collected by several countries, could degrade the ocean heat estimates that underpin weather prediction, El Niño forecasting and fisheries management. Losing US observations would be worse than randomly losing 80% of all ocean data worldwide, it found. US-funded platforms span every ocean basin, plugging critical gaps that no other nation currently fills.

Speich, a co-author of the research, said: “Ocean heat content is the most robust indicator of climate change we have – not just of what is happening in the ocean, but of the entire climate system”. Vertical temperature profiles that provide ocean heat content, are “amongst the simplest measurements we can make”, she said.

“Lose them, and you lose your ability to track not just ocean warming but the climate system as a whole – they are a proxy for variables that become unavailable the moment the observations stop.

“Forecasts would continue – but they would degrade, sometimes dangerously so. Atmospheric observations alone are not sufficient” said Speich. “Ocean data [is] fundamental to early warning systems for tropical storms, cyclones and El Niño. And the consequences would not stop at science: the economic costs would be felt within the United States itself, from agriculture to insurance to disaster response.”

The loss of US observations, in a year predicted to be an El Niño year, with “supercharged” weather extremes, could also “lose the ability to see it coming clearly to act in time”, she said.

“The stakes are concrete: farmers in the US and across South America use El Niño forecasts to decide what to plant and when – whether to expect drought or flooding shapes every agricultural decision months in advance.”

The most recent El Niño, which hit in 2023-2024, was one of the five strongest on record and contributed to 2024’s record-breaking increase in global temperature.

Removing US observations alone would produce a 163% increase in error for annual ocean heating rates, the research by Speich and her co-authors found.

On Thursday, the European Union said it would boost its own monitoring of the world’s oceans by investing in a €92m ($107m) initiative called OceanEye, more than half of which will go to GOOS. The announcement, by the European Commission, was long-planned, not a direct response to the US move.

John P Abraham, professor of engineering at the University of St Thomas, in Minnesota, and co-author of the research paper, described the US administration’s move to dismantle the $368m OOI system as “penny-wise, pound foolish”.

“The US government wants to save less than a billion in sensors, which are the eyes and ears of the ocean” said Abraham. “We have hundreds of billions in climate costs per year. The cost of the observation system is a fraction of the climate costs from hurricanes and storms that hit the US. ”

The US suffered more than 400 climate and weather disasters where damages exceeded or reached $1bn,between 1980 and 2024. In 2024 alone, the costs of such disasters amounted to $177bn. This “billion dollar climate and weather product”, managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) will no longer be updated due to “evolving priorities”, according to a note on its website.

The system, is, Abraham said is “quite an inexpensive way to reduce climate-related costs”.

“This is not about saving money, this is about killing climate science research,” Abraham said.

Samantha Burgess, the strategic climate lead at the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the European Union’s Earth observation system which integrates European space data with in-situ measurements to monitor changes and provide forecasts, said ocean observations are “irreplaceable” because “we can’t see the deep ocean from space.” They “save lives” by warning us of severe storms, she said.

Burgess said: “We need international cooperation to get the best available observations to mitigate risks in our changing world. Without ocean observations we are flying blind.”

A statement earlier this week by the National Science Foundation, which funds and oversees the OOI, said the program was not being cancelled entirely and described the plans as a “descope”, or reduction of elements, though it was not clear what data collection capacity would be left.

ref guk

The Trump administration plans to dismantle a $368m deep-sea observation system that has for more than a decade provided crucial data on ocean systems and climate change.

In a notice, the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it had “initiated descoping of the Ocean Observatories Initiative” (OOI), a vast ocean observation network comprising more than 900 instruments that collect data on ocean health, including current patterns, climate variability and marine biodiversity.

The notice, issued on 21 May, came just days after Trump fired all members of the independent board that oversees the NSF.

A statement by NSF head of media affairs, Mike England, said the program was not being cancelled entirely and described the plans as a “descope”, or reduction of elements, though it was not clear what data collection capacity would be left.

The NSF’s notice described plans to remove “all in-water infrastructure” from observation sites off the coasts of North Carolina, Oregon, Washington and Alaska, as well as from the Irminger Sea, a marginal sea between Greenland and Iceland.

Some scientists expressed dismay at the plan, while Democratic lawmakers said they would fight it, including Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who called it a “shortsighted move” that would “end up costing American taxpayers more not less”, the New York Times reported.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, said on X: “Fossil fuel is heating our oceans by the zettajoule, so Trump’s corrupt fossil fuel stooges want to turn off the monitors.”

Following the announcement, the OOI’s principal investigator, Jim Edson, said the NSF’s plan involves a phased recovery and infrastructure removal process expected to take place over the next 15 months. “As infrastructure is recovered from each array, the associated real-time data streams and observing capabilities at those locations will come to an end,” Edson said.

The move will bring to an end more than a decade of continuous ocean monitoring after the system first became operational in June 2016.

Describing the network as having “delivered the world’s most advanced continuously operating ocean observing systems”, Edson added: “We are profoundly grateful for the extraordinary efforts of the scientists, engineers, operators, educators, students and partners who made this facility possible and who continue to advance its legacy through the use of its data.”

The dismantling of the OOI marks another step in the Trump administration’s rollback of science and climate initiatives. It also follows Trump’s push to expand deep-sea mining and loosen fishing regulations, a policy that has alarmed ocean scientists and climate experts.

Hilary Palevsky, a professor focusing on marine biogeochemistry and oceanography at Boston College, pointed to the significance of the data that will be lost, particularly given the sophisticated engineering required to deploy and maintain the instruments.

“One of the real powers of this OOI and a lot of the collection of autonomous data is that scientists like me don’t have to have the expertise or the resources to be able to deploy this kind of infrastructure ourselves,” Palevsky said. “Being able to have instruments, both actually out in the atmosphere floating in the surface ocean, as well as surviving through the really deep mixing and waves in the subsurface.”

She said: “Over the more than 10 years that these things have been deployed, they’ve just gotten better and better at it. And so the data return has also gotten better and better over time … the scientific community was really just getting to the point of being able to capitalize on the data that had been collected so far … I’m really disappointed for the continuation of this important data set.”

Palevsky also warned that rebuilding such a network in the future would be difficult, saying: “If we want to put [the instruments] back out again, we need people who know how to do it and the team that knows how to do it is being dismantled along with the infrastructure program itself.

“We’re potentially at risk of having a gap in our ability to regain the expertise to do things that we had sort of just figured out how to pull off.”

For Palevsky and her students, OOI data has helped shed light on biological production in the ocean and its role in carbon sequestration – the process by which carbon dioxide is captured and stored – as well as deep-ocean processes, marine ecosystems and fisheries.

Data from the OOI has also contributed to research on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a critical system of Atlantic Ocean currents that studies suggest may be more vulnerable to collapse than previously thought, with potentially severe consequences for the global climate.

“One of the important processes in the AMOC is what we call convection, this really deep mixing of surface waters into the deep ocean that happens in winter, basically driven by the surface ocean getting really cold because the atmosphere gets super cold in winter and big, windy storms blow across the surface ocean,” Palevsky said.

“We have gained some really important insights into both how that happens in the Irminger Sea in particular, and how the drivers of that process vary from year to year from the observations that have been gained at this site,” she added.

For scientists like Palevsky, the consequences of dismantling the OOI extend far beyond ocean researchers, particularly as climate change intensifies extreme weather events around the world.

“As we reduce the amount of data that we have, the observations, as well as the science more generally to understand what’s happening in the climate system, it makes it much harder for us as a society to understand what we’re facing and what we need to do to plan for and adapt to it,” she said.

In a statement to the Guardian, the NSF head of media affairs, Mike England, said the program was not being cancelled entirely: “The NSF is not cancelling the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The decision to descope aligns with NSF’s wider strategy of a nimbler approach to prioritize support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies, as well as smart lifecycle management within its research infrastructure portfolio.”

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mma

Fox ignores climate change while covering collapsing houses along the North Carolina coast

:{SpecialPrograms Climate & Energy:(style="font-family:Merriweather"):}:

Written by Ilana Berger

Published09/19/25

During a September 18 segment, Fox & Friends covered the most recent instance of a house collapsing into the Atlantic Ocean — this time on Hatteras Island in North Carolina — and mentioned erosion along the coast, but left out that climate change is contributing to the problem. Sea-level rise and erosion from increasingly severe storms has helped claim 11 other homes in the unincorporated community of Rodanthe, North Carolina.

Video

Citation

From the September 18, 2025, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

CARLEY SHIMKUS (CO-HOST): A stilt house collapsing on the shore along the Outer Banks of North Carolina this week. It's now the 12th home claimed by the Atlantic Ocean in the past five years. The two-story beach home fell at the north end of Hatteras Island. Thankfully, the home was empty at the time. Officials say recent storms have worsened erosion, leading to more collapses like this. Those are your headlines, guys. Huge home.

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): It's interesting they let them just collapse. They don't destroy them before, knowing this is going to happen.

SHIMKUS: Yeah, that's right. And clearly the ocean is moving up the shore or they wouldn't have built that home in the first place.

EARHARDT: It's a big problem. It's a big problem on the East Coast. And you spend so much to have that beachfront property and then, you know — over time, it's gone.

SHIMKUS: It is, yes.

The Charlotte Observer correctly implicated the role of climate change in its reporting on the home’s destruction, highlighting that Hurricane Erin in August generated “waves as high as 50 feet,” causing “severe erosion in some places along the East Coast.”

The Observer noted that “the home was well away from the ocean and behind a vegetated dune when it was built in 1969. But a series of storms, which have occurred more frequently in recent years due to climate change, carved away the beach and the dune and brought the surf up to the pilings of the home and a string of others to its north and south.”

While the Fox & Friends segment mentioned that worsening storms “have caused erosion,” the network has repeatedly downplayed any connections between hurricanes and climate change, which has been making storms grow rapidly and more intense, destroying homes and businesses. Fox has also downplayed the threat of sea level rise, which occurs “mostly due to a combination of melt water from glaciers and ice sheets and thermal expansion of seawater as it warms,” according to NASA.

As FactCheck.org pointed out, “For every inch of sea level rise, approximately 100 inches of beach are lost, according to NASA oceanographer and climate scientist Josh Willis.”

Trump’s Department of Energy recently published a so-called “critical review” of climate science, which included several climate contrarians as authors and “cherry-picks text, data, and studies that paint an incomplete picture” in order “to suggest rising sea-levels in the US are only due to land-sinking,” according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. The DOE report uses limited information to claim that there is “no obvious acceleration beyond the historical average rate of sea level rise.”

Meanwhile, members of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, which manages the coastal area that was impacted, told The Charlotte Observer that “there are probably dozens of homes endangered on the oceanfront.”

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food threat

https://www.alternet.org/texas-agriculture-agency-climate-change/

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https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/climate-change-surge-uncharted-territory/

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2 22 final?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/with-limited-amount-of-time-left-new-ipcc-report-urges-climate-adaptation/

no lnx

Climatewire

CLIMATE CHANGE

With ‘Limited Amount of Time Left,’ New IPCC Report Urges Climate Adaptation

Human and natural systems are already buckling under the influence of global warming, write the authors of a landmark report

By Chelsea Harvey, Sara Schonhardt, E&E News on February 28, 2022

The lowly Bramble Cay melomys, a small Australian rodent, wasn’t the kind of animal that often made the news. But in 2019, it splashed across headlines.

The reason? It was the first mammal to go extinct because of climate change.

Named for the island where it used to live, the little rodent had been declining for decades. Scientists had warned for several years beforehand that it was either already extinct or nearly there, blaming its demise on a combination of sea-level rise and increasing tropical storms.

Now almost certainly gone, the Bramble Cay melomys is a grim reminder that some consequences of climate change are forever—and that some of these irreversible impacts are happening today.

Those warnings are among the stark messages contained in a landmark climate report released today by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, composed of the world’s leading climate scientists. A rapidly warming world will hit humans and nature harder than expected, the report warns—and we’re far from prepared to deal with the fallout.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called the report “an atlas of human suffering and a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”

“With fact upon fact, this report reveals how people and the planet are getting clobbered by climate change,” he said. ARSON ON OUR HOUSE?

The report is the latest of three in a major ongoing climate assessment by the IPCC—the sixth since the organization was established more than 30 years ago. The first installment in August, which focused on changes to the atmosphere, water and land, found that the window for limiting temperature rise to dangerous levels was nearly closed and that some of the shifts now in motion—such as sea-level rise—are irreversible (Climatewire, Aug. 9, 2021).

Today’s report focuses on how those physical changes will affect humans and natural ecosystems, and the ability of both to respond to what’s coming.

Its primary takeaways include a mix of warning and hope. Human and natural systems already are buckling under the influence of global warming. Some of them are approaching the limits of their ability to adapt. Some of them will be changed forever and won’t be able to bounce back—even if rising temperatures eventually recede.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. Some places around the world still have time to put measures in place that can help them adapt to more extreme heat, severe storms, drought and flooding. But that will require more money and resources, better policies, understanding and involvement of local communities—and all of it without delay.

The Bramble Cay melomys is hardly the only irretrievable casualty of the warming world. Weather and climate extremes already have left some irreversible impacts as human and natural systems are pushed beyond their ability to respond, the report states.

Hundreds of other species around the world have gone locally extinct—not disappearing from the globe entirely but vanishing from some regions they used to call home. Some islands and other coastal areas are slipping beneath the rising seas, likely for good.

Within the last decade, residents of Louisiana’s rapidly shrinking island community of Isle de Jean Charles—many of whom belong to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe—have become widely recognized as the first U.S. climate refugees. Elsewhere around the world, entire island nations are facing the prospect of forced relocation as their homes disappear beneath the swelling ocean.

Many ecosystems that haven’t yet passed the point of no return are approaching the brink. Mass mortality events are plaguing forests and coral reefs around the world. Permafrost is thawing across the Arctic, releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide and methane, degrading the landscape and threatening buildings and other infrastructure. Mountain glaciers are melting and shrinking, threatening local water supplies.

And around the world, human suffering is increasing as global temperatures rise.

Wildfires, droughts, floods, hurricanes and other extreme weather events are growing more intense. Food and water insecurity is rising, particularly across parts of Asia, Africa, Central and South America and small islands. Malnutrition is affecting more children and expectant mothers. Small-scale farmers and fishermen are losing their livelihoods.

Extreme heat is killing people and damaging vital infrastructure, such as roads and power systems. Heat waves have reduced people’s ability to work outdoors in some places. Severe storms have dented or even decimated economic growth in countries that can often least afford to lose it.

And it will only get worse with each fraction of a degree of warming.

“We simultaneously need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to reduce the risks of climate change and also address losses and damages that are already being experienced,” said Adelle Thomas, a scientist at Climate Analytics and the University of the Bahamas and a co-author of the report. “And we have a very limited amount of time left to do this.”

‘MUCH MORE NEGATIVE THAN EXPECTED’

The world has warmed by just over 1 degree Celsius (that’s nearly 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, when humans began rapidly pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. It doesn’t sound like much, but that small amount of warming already has wreaked havoc on Earth’s climate system.

“One of the most striking conclusions in our report is that we’re seeing adverse impacts as being much more widespread and being much more negative than expected in prior reports, than expected at the current 1.09 degrees that we have,” said Camille Parmesan, an ecologist at the University of Texas, Austin, and a co-author of the IPCC report.

The report, which synthesizes thousands of recent climate studies, reveals that some climate consequences are happening faster than scientists had expected at this level of warming.

Infectious diseases are spreading into new parts of the globe. Species are going extinct. Ecosystems are dramatically transforming.

Already, between 3.3 billion and 3.6 billion people around the world—nearly half the global population—are “highly vulnerable” to the impacts of climate change, the report finds. Climate change is taking its toll on both the physical and mental health of communities all over the world.

The findings suggest that even small amounts of future warming may have dire consequences for the planet, Parmesan noted.

In another half-degree Celsius, the world will exceed the 1.5 C warming threshold, the most ambitious target of the Paris climate agreement. If that happens, the report states, “then many human and natural systems will face additional severe risks,” including a growing danger of irreversible climate consequences.

Climate impacts around the world will grow even worse with additional warming. That’s a distinct possibility if global climate action doesn’t accelerate. At the moment, the climate policies enacted by world leaders put the world on track for around 3 degrees of warming by the end of the century.

“The good news is that the IPCC makes clear that we can limit the extent to which these climate impacts worsen if we meet the Paris targets, but so far the world—including the US—is not on track to meet those pledges,” said Dana Nuccitelli, a research coordinator with the nonprofit Citizens’ Climate Lobby, in an email to E&E News.

In land-based ecosystems, for instance, anywhere from 3 percent to 14 percent of all species may face a high risk of extinction at 1.5 C of warming. At 2 C, up to 18 percent may be threatened. At 3 C, it’s up to 29 percent—and the risk continues to grow with additional warming.

Sea-level rise will worsen as temperatures climb. And the coastal populations exposed to severe floods will increase as a result.

Both extreme rainfall events and severe drought are likely to increase in many places around the world. At 4 C of warming, around 10 percent of the entire global land area is likely to face a growing likelihood of both high river flows, increasing the risk of floods, and low river flows, increasing the risk of water shortages.

Hurricanes will grow more severe, likely causing more damage when they strike coastal communities. Wildfires will likely burn more land.

More people around the globe will suffer from extreme heat events. Heat is already the leading cause of weather-related death in the United States, and studies suggest it may cause hundreds of thousands of excess deaths around the world each year.

And food and water insecurity will continue to rise, as agriculture suffers and freshwater resources dwindle on a warming planet.

These impacts don’t affect all populations equally today, and they won’t in the future either. Certain parts of the world—particularly developing countries, small island nations and countries in tropical regions—are disproportionately at risk from many climate consequences, especially the effects of extreme heat and food and water insecurity.

And in nations all across the globe, including the United States, some populations are more vulnerable than others. These include lower-income communities, Indigenous communities and people of color, unhoused populations, and the elderly.

“Effective actions are those that reduce climate impacts and risks,” said Edwin Castellanos, a scientist at the University of the Valley of Guatemala and a co-author of the report. “And because these risks are different for different people, effective solutions need to provide site-specific actions. Putting vulnerable groups and countries at the heart of the decision-making process of how we respond to climate change can make societies more resilient.”

ADAPTATION: ‘CRITICAL TO OUR SURVIVAL’

Efforts to respond to climate impacts have improved and expanded. That’s particularly true for measures around water-related risks, such as the building of levees, early warning systems for flooding, wetland restoration and farm-based water management, the report states.

But progress on adaptation is uneven, driven in part by a lack of money needed to fund such efforts in places that face the greatest damage from rising temperatures.

Most adaptation efforts so far have been piecemeal and incremental—focused on reducing immediate climate risks rather than putting in place measures for long-term, transformational change, the report states.

They’re also small in scale and focused more on planning than implementation. And because those initiatives are geared toward current hazards, they are limited in their effectiveness as climate risks grow. And the warmer the world gets, the harder it becomes to adapt.

The report also finds that the gap between current adaptation efforts and what’s needed is widening and will only widen further if more action isn’t taken.

But there are feasible and effective adaptation options, according to the report. Heat health action plans can warn people of extreme temperatures and help protect them from exposure to prevent heat-related deaths. Restoring degraded forests can help them take in excess carbon rather than emit it. Protecting coastal or marine ecosystems, or creating corridors where threatened species can move to safer spaces, can help their survival.

But adaptation cannot prevent all the negative impacts of climate change, said Thomas, the Climate Analytics scientist and author.

In low-lying coastal communities, for example, the increasing intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes combined with sea-level rise will lead to losses that are irreparable. And the poorest and most vulnerable communities will be hit hardest, she said.

For some measures, such as water management, there is no amount of money or government support that can help with adaptation when there is no more water available.

The ability for human populations to respond to rising temperatures and try to hold them to the 1.5-degree limit also will depend on making sure natural systems are still capable of sucking carbon emissions from the atmosphere because reductions alone won’t be enough, said Parmesan from the University of Texas, Austin.

Yet the vast majority of climate finance goes toward efforts to reduce emissions, such as investments in clean energy infrastructure, rather than adaptation, Thomas said.

Another challenge? As climate damage dents economic growth, it can be harder for low-income countries to access the money needed to respond.

“Adaptation is critical to our survival in the face of climate change, but current financing schemes are underfunded and inaccessible to the majority of [small island developing states],” Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, which holds the chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said in a statement.

“The solutions are there, the report shows that adaptation works. It is particularly clearer now, given the implications and vulnerability outlined in this report, that financing for loss and damage is more crucial now than ever,” Browne added.

World leaders will gather in Egypt toward the end of this year to hammer out ways to respond faster and more effectively to impacts like those outlined in the report. Previous reports have served as the foundation for targets like the 1.5-degree temperature limit included in the Paris agreement.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said in a statement that while emissions reductions will continue to be crucial, “we must expand and expedite adaptation action.”

That matters since there also are limits to human adaptation—largely due to a lack of money and policies needed to support it. Those “soft limits” are currently playing out in low-lying coastal areas and among small-holder farmers who don’t have the resources to adapt further and will incur additional negative impacts from climate change as a result, Thomas said.

For coastal communities, what that means in practice is that installing sea walls, putting in sand dunes or restoring coral reefs or wetlands no longer will be financially feasible or may no longer be technically feasible, she explained.

But they can be overcome.

“If we put more resources toward adaptation, then additional adaptation options will open up,” Thomas said.

Time isn’t the only obstacle, either. Many countries that most need to respond to climate impacts are striving to develop and meet the needs of growing populations with limited resources. The report aims to show that adaptation and lower emissions can help with sustainable development.

But that will require increased international cooperation, especially a greater commitment to providing finance—which the report finds is currently insufficient—and also ensuring vulnerable countries have access to it.

It also will involve planning to respond to climate impacts when adaptation is no longer an option, such as relocating coastal communities when homes and livelihoods are eaten away by unstoppable rising tides.

Since the last report, there is further evidence that some adaptation can lead to unintended consequences that worsen the impacts of climate change—what’s known as maladaptation.

Examples include firefighting efforts in ecosystems that are adapted to fire and rely on it to prevent outbreaks of larger blazes or hard infrastructure that doesn’t allow for water runoff and can increase the likelihood of flooding. Sea walls that might protect coastal communities today might damage coral reef ecosystems offshore.

Maladaptation can exacerbate inequality and put communities at further risk, and it can be expensive to undo, the report states. What’s needed to avoid it is long-term planning that takes into account local contexts and works to integrate solutions across different areas.

“It really requires a systemic, comprehensive response—not just a piecemeal, standalone series of projects. [It takes] really thinking about how does the economy, climate resilience, food security, health all intersect and how a better understanding of climate change reshaping all of those sectors can help us build a more resilient, just and fair future,” said Shyla Raghav, vice president of climate change at Conservation International.

For adaptation to work, government support will be needed, the report finds. So too will clear, defined policies, better understanding of both climate impacts and solutions and access to the money to make them realities. Involving vulnerable communities, drawing on Indigenous knowledge and committing to climate justice is also vital, according to the report.

The fact that IPCC reports are endorsed by governments and provided to policymakers gives weight to their findings. And they do help influence policy, said Rachel Licker, a senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

But so far it hasn’t been enough.

“We’ve had these reports coming out for decades, and we’ve known what the causes are, we know what the solutions are, and we’re just not implementing them,” Licker said.

Despite the dire conclusions, ramping up action could be harder at a time when the world remains locked in a global pandemic and as war embroils Ukraine, threatening stability in Europe.

“We will always have emergencies at hand that seem to be more urgent than climate change,” said Castellanos of the University of the Valley of Guatemala.

But that’s no reason to delay, he added.

“We need to start addressing these problems of climate change,” he said. “Otherwise it’s going to be more complicated or even impossible to do so in the future.”

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/12/hurricanes-ocean-heating/

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cf al gore Inc truth

https://www.alternet.org/2021/08/gulf-stream-collapse/

no lnx pix twt

'Unimaginably catastrophic': Researchers fear Gulf Stream system could collapse

Jessica Corbett and Common Dreams August 05, 2021

While heatwaves, fires, and floods produce warnings that "we are living in a climate emergency, here and now," a scientific study suggested Thursday that a crucial Atlantic Ocean current system could collapse, which "would have severe impacts on the global climate system."

The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, focuses on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which includes the Gulf Stream. As the United Kingdom's Met Office explains, it is "a large system of ocean currents that carry warm water from the tropics northwards into the North Atlantic," like a conveyor belt.

Previous research has shown AMOC weakening in recent centuries. The author of the new study, Niklas Boers of the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK), found that this is likely related to a loss of stability.

"The Atlantic Meridional Overturning is one of our planet's key circulation systems," Boers, who is also affiliated with universities in the U.K. and Germany, said in a statement.

"We already know from some computer simulations and from data from Earth's past, so-called paleoclimate proxy records, that the AMOC can exhibit—in addition to the currently attained strong mode—an alternative, substantially weaker mode of operation," he continued."This bi-stability implies that abrupt transitions between the two circulation modes are in principle possible."

In the absence of long-term data on the current system's strength, Boers looked at its "fingerprints," sea-surface temperature and salinity patterns. He said that "a detailed analysis of these fingerprints in eight independent indices now suggests that the AMOC weakening during the last century is indeed likely to be associated with a loss of stability."

"The findings support the assessment that the AMOC decline is not just a fluctuation or a linear response to increasing temperatures," he continued, "but likely means the approaching of a critical threshold beyond which the circulation system could collapse."

As The Guardian's Damian Carrington reports, the collapse of "one of the planet's main potential tipping points"would be devastating on a global scale:

Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America, and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level in the eastern U.S. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.

The complexity of the AMOC system and uncertainty over levels of future global heating make it impossible to forecast the date of any collapse for now. It could be within a decade or two, or several centuries away. But the colossal impact it would have means it must never be allowed to happen, the scientists said.

"The signs of destabilization being visible already is something that I wouldn't have expected and that I find scary," Boers told the newspaper. "It's something you just can't [allow to] happen."

It is unclear what level of global heating would cause a collapse, "so the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible," he added. "The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere."

Some climate action advocates responded to the study by highlighting a science fiction movie that, as famed film critic Roger Ebert wrote nearly two decades ago, "is ridiculous, yes, but sublimely ridiculous—and the special effects are stupendous."

"We all laughed at The Day After Tomorrow, back in 2004," said Guy Shrubsole, policy and campaigns coordinator at Rewilding Britain. "Turned out it was a documentary."

The environmental advocacy group 350 Tacoma responded to the findings with a call to action.

"There are warning signs that the Gulf Stream could collapse, an unimaginably catastrophic (and irreversible) impact of fossil fuel-caused climate breakdown," the group tweeted. "Scientists say we cannot allow this to happen. People in power stand in our way."

The study comes ahead of a United Nations climate summit in Glasgow set to begin October 31. Last month, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres noted the upcoming event and reminded leaders of wealthy countries that "the world urgently needs a clear and unambiguous commitment to the 1.5-degree goal of the Paris agreement," and "we are way off track."

The Day After Tomorrow - Official® Trailer [HD]

www.youtube.com

Ravaged by Drought, a Honduran Village Faces a Choice: Pray for Rain or Migrate

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/08072019/climate-change-migration-honduras-drought-crop-failure-farming-deforestation-guatemala-trump

India Set to Lower ‘Normal Rain’ Baseline as Droughts Bite

Global Warming Is Messing with the Jet Stream. That Means More Extreme Weather.

BY BOB BERWYN

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https://www.ecowatch.com/arctic-climate-change-2634032427.html

by Jon Queally

A new research paper by American and European climate scientists focused on Arctic warming published Monday reveals that the "smoking gun" when it comes to changes in the world's northern polar region is rapidly warming air temperatures that are having — and will continue to have — massive and negative impacts across the globe.

The paper new paper — titled Key Indicators of Arctic Climate Change: 1971–2017 — is the work of scientists at the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland in Copenhagen (GUES).

"The Arctic system is trending away from its 20th century state and into an unprecedented state, with implications not only within but beyond the Arctic," said Jason Box of the GUES, lead author of the study. "Because the Arctic atmosphere is warming faster than the rest of the world, weather patterns across Europe, North America and Asia are becoming more persistent, leading to extreme weather conditions. Another example is the disruption of the ocean circulation that can further destabilize climate: for example, cooling across northwestern Europe and strengthening of storms."

John Walsh, chief scientist at AUF's research center, was the one who called arctic air tempertures the "smoking gun" discovered during the research — a finding the team did not necessarily anticipate.

"I didn't expect the tie-in with temperature to be as strong as it was," Walsh said. "All the variables are connected with temperature. All components of the Arctic system are involved in this change."

The study, published Monday as the flagship piece in a special issue on Arctic climate change indicators published by the journal Environmental Research Letters, is the first of its kind to combine observations of physical climate indicators — such as snow cover, rainfall and seasonal measurements of sea ice extent — with biological impacts, such as a mismatch in the timing of flowers blooming and pollinators working. According to Walsh, "Never have so many Arctic indicators been brought together in a single paper."

This three-and-a-half minute video put together by the research team, explains its methodology and findings in detail: [vid]

The new study comes as temperature records in the polar regions continue to break record after record. Last week, climatologists said Alaska experienced the highest March temperatures ever recorded.

Statewide temperatures averaged 27°F degrees last month, a full 4 degrees higher than the record set in 1965. Brian Brettschneider, a climatologist with the International Arctic Research Center at University of Alaska Fairbanks, told the Anchorage Daily News, "We're not just eking past records. This is obliterating records."

Also last month, as Common Dreams reported, the UN Environment Programme (ENUP) warned in a far-reaching report that winter temperatures in the Arctic are already "locked in" in such a way that significant sea level increases are now inevitable this century.

Rising temperatures, along with ocean acidification, pollution, and thawing permafrost threaten the Arctic and the more than four million people who inhabit it, including 10 percent who are Indigenous. But, as UNEP acting Executive Director Joyce Msuya noted at the time, "What happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic."

That warning was echoed by the researchers behind the new study out Monday. Their hope, they said, is that the findings about air temperatures and the delicate interconnections between the climate and other natural systems in the Arctic will "provide a foundation for a more integrated understanding of the Arctic and its role in the dynamics of the Earth's biogeophysical systems."

Reposted with permission from our media associate Common Dreams.

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

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UN Report: Extreme Weather Displaced 2 Million People in 2018

https://theconversation.com/extreme-weather-news-may-not-change-climate-change-skeptics-minds-112650

The year 2018 brought particularly devastating natural disasters, including hurricanes, droughts, floods and fires – just the kinds of extreme weather events scientists predict will be exacerbated by climate change.

Amid this destruction, some people see an opportunity to finally quash climate change skepticism. After all, it seems hard to deny the realities of climate change – and object to policies fighting it – while its effects visibly wreck communities, maybe even your own.

News outlets have hesitated to connect natural disasters and climate change, though these connections are increasing, thanks to calls from experts combined with more precise data about the effects of climate change. Media voices like The Guardian advocate for more coverage of the weather events “when people can see and feel climate change.” Harvard’s Nieman Foundation dubbed 2019 “The Year of the Climate Reporter.” Even conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh worried that media predictions about Hurricane Florence were attempts to “heighten belief in climate change.”

But a recent study from Ohio State University communications scholars found that news stories connecting climate change to natural disasters actually backfire among skeptics. As someone who also studies scientific communication, I find these results fascinating. It’s easy to assume that presenting factual information will automatically change people’s minds, but messages can have complex, frustrating persuasive effects.

The flooded Platte River in Nebraska is one example of a recent extreme weather event. AP Photo/Nati Harnik]

Investigating how skeptics hear the news

Social scientists have an unclear understanding of how climate change news affects public opinion, as not enough research has specifically explored that question. To explore the question, researchers from Ohio State recruited 1,504 volunteers. They divided them into groups who read news stories about natural disasters – fires, hurricanes or blizzards – that either emphasized or omitted the role of climate change.

Cleverly, the researchers recruited participants from geographic areas most likely to experience the disasters they read about; for instance, participants in hurricane-prone areas read the news articles about hurricanes. Further, the researchers ran the study in fall 2017, during hurricane and wildfire season, when these sorts of disasters are presumably top of mind.

After reading, participants answered 11 questions meant to measure their resistance to the article, including “Sometimes I wanted to ‘argue back’ against what I read” and “I found myself looking for flaws in the way information was presented.”

It turned out that climate change skeptics – whether politically conservative or liberal – showed more resistance to the stories that mentioned climate change. Climate change themes also made skeptics more likely to downplay the severity of the disasters. At the same time, the same articles made people who accept climate change perceive the hazards as more severe.

The study findings suggest that reporting the relationship between climate change and hazardous weather may actually increase the skepticism of skeptics, even in the face of blatant contrary evidence. Psychologists call this the boomerang effect, because the message ultimately sends people in the opposite direction.

Who’s hearing the message matters

The boomerang effects seen in this latest study are less surprising than you might think. Researchers have tried a variety of strategies, including emphasizing scientific consensus around climate change and describing the negative health impacts of climate change on people near and far, only to find that skeptics often end up more entrenched after reading attempts to persuade them.

Messages can work when they use place to increase people’s concern and willingness to act on climate change, but individual studies show inconsistent results. One new study gave Bay Area participants maps showing the increased flood risk in their zip code due to projected sea level rise. The maps made no difference in people’s concern about the effects of climate change on future generations, developing countries or the Bay Area. But the maps did make people who accept climate change less concerned that it would personally harm them. These participants may have replaced their abstract, apocalyptic assumptions about climate change threats with the more tangible predictions, causing them to feel less vulnerable.

Another study, also involving Californians, generated slightly more success for place-based climate change news, but only among participants who were already concerned about climate change. Study participants read news articles explaining that climate change would increase droughts either globally or in California. The global message made people more likely to want policy changes, while the local messages made people more likely to say they would change their personal behavior.

Place-based appeals often have some positive effect on people’s willingness to act on climate change and environmental issues.

But most studies about local messaging suggest that you cannot persuade everyone with the same message. A complex relationship of factors – including previous beliefs on climate change, political affiliation, and attachment to place and gender – can all play a role.

And psychologists offer compelling reasons why persuasive attempts sometimes backfire. Messages about the local impact of climate change might actually replace people’s abstract, altruistic values with utilitarian concerns. In the case of skeptics resisting news about climate-driven disasters, the researchers from Ohio State suggest that these people are engaged in motivated reasoning, a cognitive bias where people force new and threatening information to conform to their pre-existing knowledge.

More and more info doesn’t necessarily convince. AP Photo/Jay Reeves

More news may not convince

Resistance to news about climate change disasters might be frustrating, but even the media often ignore the role of climate change in disasters, according to an analysis by the nonprofit consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen. They found only 7 percent of American news stories about hurricanes mentioned climate change in 2018. Percentages increase for stories about wildfires (27.8 percent of stories), extreme heat (34 percent of stories) and drought (35 percent of stories). But an overwhelming amount of extreme weather news coverage never mentions climate change.

Some omissions are particularly striking. Liberal research organization Media Mattersfound only one mention of climate change in 127 broadcast news stories during two weeks of extreme heat in 2018. Only about 4 percent of stories about Hurricane Irma and Harvey mentioned climate change, according to an academic analysis that included The Houston Chronicle and the Tampa Bay Times.

Despite these low numbers, U.S. climate change coverage related to extreme weather and disasters actually rose in 2018, according to the report from Public Citizen. This increase aligns with a trend of news slowly improving its climate reporting. For instance, U.S. print media has dropped some of the skepticism from its climate change reporting, both in terms of outright skepticism of the basic science and a subtler version that involved creating a false balance by including voices which both affirm and deny the reality of climate change.

Even if the media continues to increase and improve its climate change coverage, it might not change skeptics’ minds. Of course, the media has a responsibility to report the news accurately, regardless of how some people process it. But those hoping that climate change news will convert skeptics might end up disappointed.

Given this resistance to news, other approaches, such as avoiding fear-inducing and guilt-based messaging, creating targeted messages about free-market solutions, or deploying a kind of “jiu jitsu” persuasion that aligns with pre-existing attitudes, may prove more effective at influencing skeptics. In the meantime, social scientists will continue to investigate ways to combat the stubborn boomerang effect, even as the consequences of climate change intensify all around us.

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mojo ala

In fact, there is no scientific consensus on how climate change affects tornadoes, though generally, global warming is believed to make extreme weather events—from hurricanes to cold snaps—more deadly for reasons that do not necessarily apply to tornadoes. “No known scientific studies have established a cause-and-effect relationship between tornadoes and climate warming,” E&E News reported Tuesday. “But scientists do say they are witnessing macro-scale changes in tornado frequency and variability across the United States.” The site noted that “in the 1980s, tornadoes damaged an average of nine counties per year,” but between 2007 and 2016, “tornadoes damaged an average of 21 counties annually.”

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https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/03/11/How-broadcast-TV-networks-covered-climate-change-in-2018/223076

JRNL FAIL

many graphs

no lnx

How broadcast TV networks covered climate change in 2018

Research ››› March 11, 2019 9:11 AM EDT ››› TED MACDONALD & LISA HYMAS

Broadcast TV news coverage of climate change plummeted 45 percent from 2017 to 2018, even as the climate crisis steadily worsened. The major news programs on the broadcast networks aired a combined total of just 142 minutes of climate coverage in 2018, or less than two and a half hours. Almost three-quarters of that coverage aired in just the last three months of the year. The networks did a particularly poor job of explaining how climate change exacerbates extreme weather; none of the networks' news reports on the major hurricanes of 2018 even mentioned climate change. The networks’ coverage was also lacking in diversity: Only 9 percent of the people featured in climate segments were people of color, and only 19 percent were women.

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

For this study, Media Matters examined 2018 news coverage of climate change on broadcast TV networks, counting and analyzing segments devoted to climate change and segments in which an employee of the network incorporated climate change. We analyzed coverage on the nightly news programs and Sunday morning political shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC. We also analyzed Fox Broadcasting Co.’s syndicated Sunday morning political show, Fox News Sunday. Fox Broadcasting Co. (which is separate from the Fox News cable channel) does not have a nightly news program, so overall there was far less Fox airtime to analyze.

Top trends from a year of broadcast TV news climate coverage

Key findings:

There was a 45 percent drop in climate change coverage on the broadcast networks’ nightly news and Sunday morning political shows from 2017 to 2018 -- from a total of 260 minutes in 2017 down to just 142 minutes in 2018.

Nearly a third of the time that the networks spent covering climate change in 2018, or 46 minutes, came from a single episode of NBC's Meet the Press on December 30 that was dedicated to discussion of climate change.

NBC was the only network that aired more minutes of climate coverage in 2018 than in 2017 -- an increase of 23 percent. CBS' time spent on climate coverage fell 56 percent from 2017 to 2018, Fox News Sunday's fell by 75 percent, and ABC's fell by 81 percent.

People of color made up only 9 percent of those who were interviewed, featured, or quoted in the networks’ climate coverage, and women made up only 19 percent.

None of the broadcast TV networks' news reports on hurricanes Florence or Michael mentioned climate change. Only nine of their segments reporting on other weather disasters of 2018 mentioned that climate change exacerbates extreme weather.

Almost three-quarters of 2018’s climate coverage occurred in the last three months of the year. Much of it focused on major climate science reports released by the United Nations and the U.S. government.

The links between national security and climate change were discussed only once in 2018, in an NBC segment. ABC and CBS did not mention that climate change poses serious threats to national security.

Solutions or actions offered in response to climate change were mentioned in only a fifth of climate segments aired on ABC, CBS, or NBC.

Climate change coverage fell significantly from 2017 to 2018

Coverage of climate change on the major broadcast networks declined 45 percent from 2017 to 2018. The programs aired a combined 142 minutes of climate coverage in 2018 -- less than two and a half hours. In 2017, the programs spent a combined 260 minutes on climate change. The decline would have been even steeper if not for the December 30 episode of NBC's Meet the Press, which devoted more than 46 minutes to discussing climate change.

...

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'Scary': Warming of Oceans Is Equivalent to 1.5 Atomic Bombs Every Second Over Past 150 Years

By Julia Conley

Carbon emissions are affecting life in all of Earth's ecosystems—contributing to drought, flooding and the melting of ice in the Arctic and Antarctic regions. But a new study by researchers at Oxford University details how the planet's oceans are by far the climate crisis's biggest victim, with implications for the global population.

Keep reading...

...

The Guardian made that calculation after examining the report, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences—and alarmed the study's lead author, who confirmed it was accurate.

"I try not to make this type of calculation, simply because I find it worrisome," Prof. Laure Zannat told the Guardian. "We usually try to compare the heating to [human] energy use, to make it less scary."

But Zannat's preferred calculation was hardly less troubling, with the study finding that the heating of the oceans from 1871 to the present day is also equivalent to 1,000 times the energy used by the entire global population every year.

With carbon emissions rising in recent decades, up 60 percentsince 1990, the warming oceans can be compared to the effects of three atomic bombs, like the ones that decimated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, per second since that year.

As researchers have reported in recent years, the world's oceans absorb more than 90 percent of the carbon emissions caused by oil and gas drilling, agriculture, and other human activity.

Most of the heat the Oxford University researchers studied is being stored deep in the world's oceans, causing sea level rise and making hurricanes and tsunamis stronger and more destructive.

"Obviously, we are putting a lot of excess energy into the climate system and a lot of that ends up in the ocean. There is no doubt," Zanna told the Guardian.

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11/18 oceans have absorbed more heat than thot

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/31102018/jet-stream-climate-change-study-extreme-weather-arctic-amplification-temperature

...reenhouse gases are increasingly disrupting the jet stream, a powerful river of winds that steers weather systems in the Northern Hemisphere. That's causing more frequent summer droughts, floods and wildfires, a new study says.

The findings suggest that summers like 2018, when the jet stream drove extreme weather on an unprecedented scale across the Northern Hemisphere, will be 50 percent more frequent by the end of the century if emissions of carbon dioxide and other climate pollutants from industry, agriculture and the burning of fossil fuels continue at a high rate.

In a worst-case scenario, there could be a near-tripling of such extreme jet stream events, but other factors, like aerosol emissions, are a wild card, according to the research, published today in the journal Science Advances. The study identifies how the faster warming of the Arctic twists the jet stream into an extreme pattern that leads to persistent heat and drought extremes in some regions, with flooding in other areas.

The researchers said they were surprised by how big a role other pollutants play in the jet stream's behavior, especially aerosols—microscopic solid or liquid particles from industry, agriculture, volcanoes and plants. Aerosols have a cooling effect that partially counteracts the jet stream changes caused by greenhouse gases, said co-author Dim Comou, a climate and extreme weather researcher at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

"The aerosols forcing was a bit of a surprise to us," Comou said. "Those emissions are expected to decrease rapidly in the mid-latitude regions in the next 10 to 30 years" because of phasing out of pollution to protect people from breathing unhealthy air.

In recent decades, aerosol pollution has actually been slowing down the global warming process across the Northern Hemisphere's mid-latitude industrial regions. If aerosol emissions drop rapidly, as projected, these regions would warm faster.

That would change the temperature contrast between the Arctic and mid-latitudes, which would dampen the warming effect of greenhouse gases on the jet stream. By how much depends on the rate, location and timing of the reductions, and the offset would end by mid-century, when man-made aerosols are expected to be mostly gone and no longer reflecting incoming solar radiation, said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist and study lead author Michael Mann.

Repeats of the Summer of 2018?

The jet stream is a powerful high-altitude wind that shapes and moves weather systems from west to east. Different branches of the jet stream undulate from the subtropics to the edge of the Arctic. In the past 15 years at least, the jet stream has been coiling up more, slithering farther north and south. When it gets stuck in the extreme pattern identified by the scientists, it leads to more deadly and costly weather extremes.

That extremely wavy pattern, called "quasi-resonant amplification," was evident during the extreme summer of 2018, Mann said.

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arctic matters....

https://www.ecowatch.com/banksy-artwork-auction-2611413729.html

https://www.alternet.org/environment/hurricane-florence-climate-policy-has-also-dangerously-stalled

Call it “The Great Stall.” Hurricane Florence lingered over the Carolinas for four days, dumping some 30 inches of rain. Flood waters are still rising, even as Typhoon Mangkhut, a superstorm 500 miles across, rakes the Philippines, Hong Kong and crashes into China. Florence is just the latest in a long series of catastrophic events generated by stalled weather patterns -- slow-moving systems which occur when one of the jet streams that flow around the Earth pinches off a massive section of air from normal wind flows for an prolonged period of time. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has compiled a long list of severe weather events in the US, and most of them are linked, in one way or another, to stalled weather systems.

Just in the past few months, NOAA has reported that “wildfires are burning larger and more intensely than before,” and that “unusually persistent harmful algal blooms” are plaguing Florida. The Western US is baking under high temperatures, while the Eastern US is “getting increasingly soggy.” NOAA has even reported that land areas in 2017 “recorded more than 60 days of extreme daytime heat worldwide, nearly double the 1961-1990 average.”

Whether it’s record heat, torrential rain or slow-moving currents, stalls can be catastrophic. Last year, Hurricane Harvey stalled out over Houston, dropping as much as 60 inches of rain in some areas and inflicting an estimated $125 billion in damages on the area.

Just last month, one of the leading climate research institutes, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, cautioned that the warming of the Arctic is “messing” with the giant airstreams that encircle the Earth and contributing to a slowdown in weather patterns in the mid-latitudes. As Dim Coumou, an Institute researcher, noted just a few weeks ago, these changes in airstreams can, together with other factors, create “extreme extremes.”

So long as the stalls continue to worsen, so will the resulting extremes. Hurricane Florence may be a sign, just as Hurricane Harvey was last year, of worse things to come. Meteorologists are now projecting that Florence could dump up to 18 trillion gallons of water on North Carolina before it moves out of the state.

The growing frequency of extreme weather events is not a matter of bad luck; it is bad environmental policy made manifest. Nature, as it turns out, imitates politics. The critically needed political momentum has stalled, and politicians contribute to stalling weather patterns by stalling on climate change action.

Despite the 2015 Paris climate agreement, officially ratified in November 2016, we have yet to reach “global peaking” of greenhouse gas emissions. Global energy-related carbon emissions rose to a record high of 32.5 gigatons in 2017. With the Trump administration’s repudiation of the Paris agreement and India and China’s continued reliance upon coal, the hope of keeping the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius—let alone to 1.5 degrees—is rapidly fading.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed rules that would give states far more leeway in regulating carbon emissions from coal-fired plants. Market forces will continue to reduce the US’s reliance upon coal-fired plants, but the proposed rule, if adopted, would almost certainly slow the rate at which such plants are retired. The EPA also just announced rules that would roll back regulation of methane emissions from the natural gas industry.

But it’s not just the US that is stalling on curbing emissions. After declines in 2015 and 2016, the International Energy Agency reported earlier this year that global demand for coal rose 1 percent in 2017, principally due to rising demand in Asia.

Population growth and rising consumer demand for energy are working against us. The United Nations projects that the world population will increase nearly 50 percent, from 7.6 billion today to 11.2 billion by the end of the century. At the same time, the size of the world’s middle class and resulting resource consumption will likely expand at an even faster rate.

Political action is urgently required. Renewable energy is economically competitive in many parts of the globe, but unless the world’s political leaders—not just Trump—take steps to close down outdated fossil fuel plants, efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions will fall far short of what is required to avoid more extreme extremes.

It is widely believed that Republicans in Congress are gradually awakening to the reality of human-induced climate change, and there are encouraging signs in China that the political leadership in response to domestic concerns about pollution will, at long last, get serious about curbing carbon emissions from coal-fired plants. But before long, it may be too late.

Stalls, whether political or meteorological, can be costly, dangerous, even life-threatening. It’s time to break the “great stall” on climate change.

This article was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute, and originally published by Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

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https://www.alternet.org/new-study-refutes-trumps-climate-change-denial-and-highlights-threat-corn-crops-around-world

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/25012018/air-pollution-climate-research-weather-data-aerosol-particles-water-cycle-rainfall

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China’s Breadbasket Could Suffer the Worst of Climate Change’s Deadly Heat Waves

Deadly heat waves are breaking records and making headlines around the world this summer, but they have nothing on the heat waves that the North China Plain is likely to see in the future if we don't act now to combat climate change.

https://www.ecowatch.com/polar-vortex-climate-change-2522395530.html

Polar Vortex,' 'Winter Storm Grayson' and 'Bombogenesis': What Do They Mean?

By Brenda Ekwurzel

Forecasters are trotting out "polar vortex" and atypical terms like "Nor'easter bomb" and "bombogenesis." These words signal the unusual and dangerous conditions forecast for winter storm Grayson and their implications for the southeast U.S., mid-Atlantic, and eventually New England and beyond. What do they mean?

Meteorologists use the phrase bombogenesis to describe a sudden and extreme drop in barometric pressure of at least 24 millibars over 24 hours, which leads to rapid intensification of a mid-latitude cyclone. We are used to hearing about North Atlantic cyclones during summer and fall—it's the meteorological term for hurricanes—and now winter storm Grayson is drawing moisture from a similar cyclonic circulation that will bring blizzard conditions as it moves northeast just offshore of the U.S. east coast.

Winter weather and global warming

With cold temperatures and icy conditions leaving the continental U.S. reeling over the New Year, it might seem counter-intuitive to say that we're still experiencing global warming. But as my colleague Peter Frumhoff puts it, saying that climate change isn't occurring because of the cold in the eastern U.S. is "like saying if everyone around me is wealthy then poverty is not a problem ... local weather is not an indicator of changes in climate."

Global warming is exactly that: global. The total area of the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii, is only about 2 percent of the surface area of Earth. This map from the University of Maine Climate Change Institute showing the deviations from average temperature for this time of year demonstrates this concept well—much of the continental U.S. may be unusually cold right now but most of the rest of the world is well above average (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Temperature departure from average for this time of year. Much of the continental U.S. may be unusually cold right now but most of the rest of the world is well above average.Map from the University of Maine Climate Change Institute

Alaska has been unusually warm this winter even though it is in the Arctic. It might seem strange that local weather events such as a balmy Alaska and freezing Florida can occur at the same time, but they're examples of another phenomenon we can expect from a changing climate: more events at the extremes. Many scientists are studying these clues to explore the connections between a rapidly warming Arctic from climate change and shifting extreme weather patterns in northern hemispheremid-latitudes (i.e. the continental U.S. and Eurasia).

Arctic cold outbursts reach the southern U.S.

Scientists noticed an unusual winter pattern in the jet stream that started around the year 2000. Before that time the jet stream was typically fast with small waves that kept the cold air contained in the Arctic region. However, the jet stream began slowing down, and its waves meandering more.

The distance between the peak (like the green and yellow band peaking near the intersection of the borders between Alaska and the Yukon Territory of Canada in Figure 2) and the trough (the highlighted red, yellow and green area near the southern U.S.) has become much longer since the 2000s when compared to prior decades.

[img]

Figure 2: The jet stream and polar vortex on January 3, 2018Map from the University of Maine Climate Change Institute

Scientific process and progress in understanding extreme weather

Scientists are making progress in better understanding how much natural seasonal patterns, ocean cycles and other factors play a role in altering the jet stream and how much global warming is responsible. Some say a lot, others not as much. This is a robust scientific discussion that has continued to evolve over the past several years.

One thing is certain: no climate scientists say there is zero contribution from global warming. We agree on 90 percent of the facts of the issue—now we're debating the remaining 10 percent.

How will we know when this particular scientific debate is over? One way or another, the scientific community will reach consensus—just as it has with climate change more broadly.

Assessments will shift toward keeping track of the changing percentage of contribution from climate change to the altered jet stream. And we'll really know consensus is reached when this research is incorporated into longer-term outlooks for winter forecasts. In fact, a recent publication suggests that if the Arctic indicators—such as the strength or weakness of the polar vortex—were better incorporated into current winter forecasts, we could have two- to six-week previews of the winter temperatures in the northern hemisphere just like we get our 10-day forecast today.

If predictions become reliable enough, this could help cities and counties plan to distribute snow removal equipment to regions that will need it well in advance of storms. This knowledge may better protect people facing risks to their daily lives from the consequences of extreme cold winter storm events.

Brenda Ekwurzel is a senior climate scientist and the director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists.