Sea Level Rise: Up, Up and Away!

June 24, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Sea levels, after several thousand years of little or no change, began to rise steadily in the early 1900s, trailing the Industrial Revolution and the increased use of fossil fuels by decades.  Projections for future rise vary from difficult to catastrophic.  A report released on Friday, June 22, 2010 by the National Research Council, the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, has occasioned  a spate of articles, with only a few making it to the front pages.  SF Chronicle: David Perlman; Newser;  AFP;  NY Times (using AP)

The West Coast papers emphasize the difference in expected sea level rise in the California of the San Andreas fault, and the California north of Cape Mendocino, Oregon and Washington which rides up over the subsiding Juan de Fuca ocean plate.

For the California coast south of Cape Mendocino, the committee projects that sea level will rise 4–30 cm [1.6"-11.8"] by 2030 relative to 2000, 12–61 cm [4.7"- 24"] by 2050, and 42–167 cm [16.5" - 65.7"] by 2100. For the Washington, Oregon, and California coasts north of Cape Mendocino, sea level is projected to change between -4 cm (sea-level fall) and +23 cm by 2030, -3 cm and +48 cm by 2050, and 10–143 cm by 2100.

 On the East Coast attention is focused on a 600 mile “hot spot“ from Cape Hatteras to Boston where a second report, from the U.S. Geological Service, says the sea is rising 3-4 times faster than the global average.

In absolute figures, sea levels on this stretch of coast have climbed by between 2 and 3.7 millimetres per year since 1980, whereas the global increase over the same period was 0.6–1.0 millimetres per year.

The existence of the hotspot is consistent with the measured slowing of Atlantic Ocean circulation, which may be tied to changes in water temperature, salinity and density in the subpolar north of the ocean.

The researchers predicted that by 2100, sea levels in the hotspot would rise by between 20 and 29 centimetres above the global increase, which most oceanographers predict will be about one metre.

The meat of the NRC report is here:

Sea-level change is one of the most visible consequences of changes in the Earth’s climate.
A warming climate causes global sea level to rise principally by (1) warming the oceans, which
causes sea water to expand, increasing ocean volume, and (2) melting land ice, which transfers
water to the ocean. Tide gage and satellite observations show that global sea level has risen an
average of about 1.7 mm yr over the 20th century (Bindoff et al., 2007), which is a significant
increase over rates of sea-level rise during the past few millennia (Shennan and Horton, 2002;
Gehrels et al., 2004). Projections suggest that sea level will continue to rise in the future (Figure
1.1). However, the rate at which sea level is changing varies from place to place and with time.
Along the west coast of the United States, sea level is influenced by changes in global mean sea
level as well as by regional changes in ocean circulation and climate patterns such as El Niño;
gravitational and deformational effects of ice age and modern ice mass changes; and uplift or
subsidence along the coast. The relative importance of these factors in any given area determines
whether the local sea level will rise or fall and how fast it will change.


FIGURE 1.1 Estimated, observed, and projected global sea-level rise from 1800 to 2100. The pre-1900 record is based on geological evidence, and the observed record is from tide gages (red line) and satellite altimetry (blue line). Example projections of sea-level rise to 2100 are from IPCC (2007) global climate models (pink shaded area) and semi-empirical methods (gray shaded area; Rahmstorf, 2007). SOURCES: Adapted from Shum et al. (2008), Willis et al. (2010), and Shum and Kuo (2011)

The report was requested by ten state and federal agencies including 4 in California (see ix of the report) which want the best information for planning purposes — unlike the North Carolina Senate which recently passed a bill regulating which measurements were to be used in calculating sea-rise.  [It appears that the scorn storm breached the walls of idiocy and the bill has now been re-written, having been resoundingly rejected by the NC House.]

Here’s a handy little map device to drill down to your back yard and see how sea level rise might affect you (This is a linear plot, so it doesn’t take in the variances reported on above.  Interesting nevertheless.]

Filed under Climate Change, Oceans Tagged with , ,

Climate Change Worse Than Realized

June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 21 (Xinhua) — Carlo Rubbia, who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in physics, says global warming is a much bigger problem than most people realize.

“My message is that the situation is much worse than one sees and believes,” Rubbia, an Italian particle physicist and inventor, told Xinhua in an interview on the sidelines of the U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20 Earth Summit).

Rubbia mentioned two “contradictory phenomena” — global warming and the aerosol masking effect which effectively offset the effects of the former.

Otherwise, the temperature of the Earth would have increased to about three degrees centigrade by now, he said.

“The man in the street does not realize the effects of climate change,” because in the last 10 years, the temperature did not increase substantially. So “people feel the pressure of global warming is not a reality,” he said.

 

Filed under Climate Change Tagged with

Kerry Blasts the Deniers

June 22, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Filed under Climate Change Tagged with ,

Drought, Heat, Fire: Call it Anything but Don’t Call it Climate Change

June 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

“Hundreds of firefighters have joined efforts to tackle two of the biggest wildfires ever seen in the US states of Colorado and New Mexico.

The Colorado blaze shrouded the state capital, Denver, 60 miles (100km) away, in smoke, hampering rescue efforts.

…Smaller fires also burnt in nine drought-stricken western states, including Utah, California and Arizona.”

BBC

But you got to go to Jeff Masters at his Wunderground blog to get a whiff of the word “climate change”

 

Figure 3. The Whitewater Baldy Complex fire seen on our wundermap with the fire layer turned on. The red region outlined in yellow is the active fire perimeter.


Western U.S. wildfires expected to increase due to climate change

Expect a large increase in fires over much of the globe late this century due to climate change, says research published this month in the Journal Ecosphere. Using fire models driven by output from sixteen climate models used in the 2007 IPCC report, the researchers, led by Max Moritz of UC Berkeley, found that 38% of the planet should see increases in fire activity over the next 30 years. This figure increases to 62% by the end of the century. However, in many regions where precipitation is expected to increase–particularly in the tropics–there should be decreased fire activity. The scientists predicted that 8% of Earth will see decreases in fire probability over the next 30 years, and 20% will see decreases by the end of the century.

Is your city doing, or dithering on climate change? See Climate Dithering.

Filed under Climate Change Tagged with ,

Climate Dithering

June 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

They know something’s happening but they don’t want to act on it….

from Jenner & Block, Corporate Environmental …

“Cities around the world are increasingly aware of the need to prepare for greater variability in temperature, precipitation, and natural disasters expected to take place as a result of global climate change. To gain insight into the status of adaptation planning globally, approaches cities around the world are taking, and challenges they are encountering, a survey was sent to communities that are members of International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) Local Governments for Sustainability. A total of 468 cities (44%) completed the 40-question survey, with the majority of respondents being from the U.S. since this is where ICLEI has the largest membership.

The ICLEI survey is the basis of MIT’s recent report Progress and Challenges in Urban Climate Adaptation Planning: Results of a Global Survey. Key findings include:

  1. Overall, 79% of cities worldwide report that in the past five years, they perceived changes in temperature, precipitation, sea level, or natural hazards that they attribute to climate change.
  2. Approximately 19% of the cities report that they have completed an assessment and about the same number presently are conducting one.
  3. 68% of cities worldwide report that they are pursuing adaptation planning, with Latin American and Canadian cities having the highest rates of engagement (95% and 92% respectively) and the U.S. having the lowest (59%).
  4. Four types of adaptation activities are especially common and reflect the nascent state of planning initiatives in most of the cities that participated in the survey. These activities are: (1) meeting with local government departments on adaptation; (2) searching the web or literature for information on adaptation; (3) forming a commission or task force to support adaptation planning; and (4) developing partnerships with NGOs, other cities, businesses, or community groups.
  5. Globally, the three top-ranked challenges are: (1) securing funding for adaptation; (2) communicating the need for adaptation to elected officials and local departments; and (3) gaining commitment and generating appreciation from national government for the realities of local adaptation challenges.

The MIT report is available athttp://web.mit.edu/jcarmin/www/urbanadapt/Urban%20Adaptation%20Report%20FINAL.p

I’d like to see a geographic map of the US cities involved.  The report from MIT has such a map, but I can’t find specific names of cities yet, nor their degree of participation.  First glance sees what we’d expect: high participation on west coast and north east, low in the south and mid-west.

Filed under Climate Change Tagged with ,

April is the Cruelist Warmest Month

May 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Despite the deniers, the temperature keeps climbing, or better said, the “anomalies” keep becoming the normalcies.

People visit the public swimming pool Schoenbrunner Bad in Vienna, Austria, on April 29. Temperatures rose to 90 degrees in parts of Austria that weekend

“Last month was the third hottest April in the United States and unusually warm in Russia, but cooler than normal in parts of western Europe. This is despite a now ended La Nina which generally lowers global temperatures.

Temperatures that would have once been considered unusually hot and record breaking now aren’t even in the top two or three, said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University climate scientist.

The last time the globe had a month that averaged below the 20th Century normal was February 1985. April makes it 326 months in a row. Nearly half the population of the world has never seen a month that was cooler than normal, according to United Nations data.”

 

April Warmth

Filed under Climate Change Tagged with ,

Clear Indications that Climate Change is Affecting Fish Stock

May 11, 2012 by Leave a Comment

From Climate Progress

“Rising ocean temperatures are driving major changes in fisheries throughout western Europe, bringing warm water species typically seen in the Mediterranean to the coast of the United Kingdom.

“A new report card issued by European marine researchers details the ecological and economic impact that climate change is having on fisheries in the UK and Scotland — concluding that there are “clear indications that climate change is affecting fish stocks” in the region.

Filed under Climate Change Tagged with , ,

Artifical Leaves or Geo Engineering?

May 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The New Yorker, May 14, 2012 has two articles relevant to the rapidly changing climate.

David Owen writes about Daniel Nocera’s excitingly innovative “artificial leaf,” a “solar panel” like sheet of thin mineral spray, on both sides of the support leaf, which when immersed in water and exposed to sunlight would emit hydrogen and oxygen.  The hydrogen can be collected and stored and used as a fuel.

It’s a very interesting article about not only an interesting technological break-through but Nocera’s interesting vision: these artificial leaves would do the most good in impoverished areas where even brackish or polluted water could be used to produce energy for light, small scale technologies that would materially improve lives without adding to the carbon burden threatening us all.

There are some downsides of course.  To read it you’ll have to get the paper edition, or pay to read it on line.  Good stuff.

The MIT press release, where Nocera works, is here.

In the same edition is an article about geo-engineering our way out of what many are predicting is the coming climate catastrophe.  Michael Specter lays out the ideas behind the why and how and who for taking steps as enormous as trying to imitate nature’s Mt Pinatubo explosion in 1991 that kept the earth cooler than it would have been for over two years.

He properly points to the dilemma at the heart of even thinking ‘geo-engineering.”  If things on earth go as many are predicting there may be no way out other than some colossal project, and for any chance of success it would have to be well beyond a few vague thoughts/  Actual engineering and testing will have to have happened.  However, if the thought takes hold among the doubtful or the lazy, that there is no need to do anything now because there is a possible big solution 100 years from now, resistance to actual, somewhat painful, actions today will increase.

The entire article is available on-line, for the present.  Check it out.

There is also a pod-cast of Elizabeth Kolbert talking to Specter about the article and the matters therein.  [Starts about 5:30 .. ]

[And subscribe, of course, to the New Yorker!]

Filed under Climate Change Tagged with , ,

The Climate is a Changin’ – Accept it that Soon You’ll be drenched to the bone….

May 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

James Hansen,  one of the earliest contemporary scientists to warn about what too much CO2 in the atmosphere would do to our lives on earth, and one of the most persistent in keeping after the science and making public the evidence has a top of the page opinion piece in the NY Times today.  The headline is pretty discouraging:

Game Over for the Climate

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate. …

If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

Filed under Action!, Climate Change Tagged with , ,

March: Warmest on Record in US

April 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

It has been raining and cold for three days straight in Western Turkey.  On Büyükada island we bundle up to go out to eat and hurry back to get warm.  But the NNE winds and wet are par for the course here in April.  Not so, the past month in the US, as verifies by NOAA and reported by Weather Underground.

Not only was March 2012 the warmest March in the U.S. since record keeping began in 1895, it was also the second most extreme month for warmth in U.S. history, said NOAA yesterday, in their monthly “State of the Climate” report. The average temperature of 51.1°F was 8.6 degrees above the 20th century average for March, and 0.5°F warmer than the previous warmest March in 1910. Of the more than 1,400 months that have passed since the U.S. weather records began in 1895, only one month–January 2006–had a larger departure from its average temperature than March 2012. A remarkable 25 states east of the Rockies had their warmest March on record, and an additional 15 states had a top-ten warmest March. Only four states were cooler than average, with Alaska being the coldest (tenth coldest March on record.)

Filed under Climate Change Tagged with , ,

← Older posts