Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms

Dr. James Hansen has published, with sixteen renowned scientists from around the world, the direst warning about climate change, ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms to date. We have published the abstract from the paper and have provided a link to the full study.

The warning from the paper cannot be over-emphasized. Sea level rise is real, it's highly dangerous, and must not be ignored. The paper states that, when ice sheets have melted before due to natural forcings, the consequences have been catastrophic. In the post-industrial age, where the melting is greater than during the paleo melts, the science points to even more catastrophic consequences.

Humanity is rapidly extracting and burning fossil fuels without full understanding of the consequences. Current assessments place emphasis on practical effects such as in- creasing extremes of heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall, floods, and encroaching seas (IPCC, 2014; USNCA, 2014). These assessments and our recent study (Hansen et al., 2013a) conclude that there is an urgency to slow carbon dioxide (CO2) emis- sions, because the longevity of the carbon in the climate system (Archer, 2005) and persistence of the induced warming (Solomon et al., 2010) may lock in unavoidable highly undesirable consequences. (...) 

If the ocean continues to accumulate heat and increase melting of marine-terminating ice shelves of Antarctica and Greenland, a point will be reached at which it is impossible to avoid large scale ice sheet disintegration with sea level rise of at least several meters. The economic and social cost of losing functionality of all coastal cities is practically incalculable.  

Large scale ice sheet disintegration with a sea level rise of at least several meters. That means, according to the report, the functional loss of all coastal cities.  The report points to unpredictable and sudden melts where the ocean is warming and increased superstorms and sea level rise--with the implication of a threat to civilization itself--as a result. 

As there is no doubt politics will try to explain or confuse this report, we are posting the actual abstract and link to the report, which, while scientific, is clear enough to be terrifying.

Action must be taken.

The report is available here:  → read more

Global Temperature in 2015

by James Hansen[a], Makiko Sato^a, Reto Ruedy[b],[c] Gavin A. Schmidt^c, Ken Lo^b,c

Source: Earth Sciences Institute, Columbia University

Abstract. Global surface temperature in 2015 was +0.87°C (~1.6°F) warmer than the 1951-1980 base period in the GISTEMP analysis, making 2015 the warmest year in the period of instrumental data. The 2015 temperature was boosted by a strong El Niño, nearly of the same strength as the 1998 “El Niño of the century”. The updated global temperature record makes it clear that there was no global warming “hiatus”. Global temperature in 2015 was +1.13 (~2.03°F) relative to the 1880-1920 mean. Accounting for interannual variability, it is fair to say that global warming has now reached ~1°C, almost ~2°F.

Read more→

Dr. Michael Mann's Testimony to the Democratic Platform Committee

Dr. Michael Mann of Penn State testified before the Democratic Platform Drafting Committee about the critical issue of climate change, and the importance of building on the progress from the Paris Climate Conference.

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Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 ◦C global warming is highly dangerous

James Hansen¹, M. Sato1, P. Hearty², R. Ruedy^3,4, M. Kelley^3,4, V. Masson-Delmotte⁵, G. Russell⁴, G. Tselioudis⁴, J. Cao⁶, E. Rignot^7,8, I. Velicogna^8,7, E. Kandiano⁹, K. von Schuckmann¹⁰, P. Kharecha1,⁴, A. N. Legrande⁴, M. Bauer11, and K.-W. Lo<sup>3,4

1</sup>Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions, Columbia University Earth Institute, New York, NY 10115, USA
²Department of Environmental Studies, University of North Carolina at Wilmington,
North Carolina 28403, USA
³Trinnovium LLC, New York, NY 10025, USA
⁴NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025, USA
⁵Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (CEA-CNRS-UVSQ), Gif-sur-Yvette, France
⁶Key Lab of Aerosol Chemistry & Physics, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an 710075, China
⁷Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, 91109, USA
⁸Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, California, 92697, USA
⁹GEOMAR, Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Wischhofstrasse 1–3,
Kiel 24148, Germany
¹⁰Mediterranean Institute of Oceanography, University of Toulon, La Garde, France
¹¹Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA

Abstract

There is evidence of ice melt, sea level rise to +5–9 m, and extreme storms in the prior interglacial period that was less than 1◦C warmer than today. Human-made climate forcing is stronger and more rapid than paleo forcings, but much can be learned by combining insights from paleoclimate, climate modeling, and on-going observations. We argue that ice sheets in contact with the ocean are vulnerable to non-linear disin- tegration in response to ocean warming, and we posit that ice sheet mass loss can be approximated by a doubling time up to sea level rise of at least several meters. Dou- bling times of 10, 20 or 40 years yield sea level rise of several meters in 50, 100 or 10 200 years. Paleoclimate data reveal that subsurface ocean warming causes ice shelf melt and ice sheet discharge.

Our climate model exposes amplifying feedbacks in the Southern Ocean that slow Antarctic bottom water formation and increase ocean tem- perature near ice shelf grounding lines, while cooling the surface ocean and increasing sea ice cover and water column stability. Ocean surface cooling, in the North Atlantic as well as the Southern Ocean, increases tropospheric horizontal temperature gradi- ents, eddy kinetic energy and baroclinicity, which drive more powerful storms. We focus attention on the Southern Ocean’s role in affecting atmospheric CO2 amount, which in turn is a tight control knob on global climate.

The millennial (500–2000 year) time scale of deep ocean ventilation affects the time scale for natural CO2 change, thus the time scale for paleo global climate, ice sheet and sea level changes. This millennial carbon cycle time scale should not be misinterpreted as the ice sheet time scale for response to a rapid human-made climate forcing. Recent ice sheet melt rates have a doubling time near the lower end of the 10–40 year range.

We conclude that 2 ◦C global warming above the preindustrial level, which would spur more ice shelf melt, is highly dangerous. Earth’s energy imbalance, which must be eliminated to stabilize climate, provides a crucial metric.

1. Introduction

Humanity is rapidly extracting and burning fossil fuels without full understanding of the consequences. Current assessments place emphasis on practical effects such as increasing extremes of heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall, floods, and encroaching seas (IPCC, 2014; USNCA, 2014). These assessments and our recent study (Hansen et al., 2013a) conclude that there is an urgency to slow carbon dioxide (CO2) emis- sions, because the longevity of the carbon in the climate system (Archer, 2005) and persistence of the induced warming (Solomon et al., 2010) may lock in unavoidable highly undesirable consequences.

Despite these warnings, global CO2 emissions continue to increase as fossil fuels remain the primary energy source. The argument is made that it is economically and morally responsible to continue fossil fuel use for the sake of raising living standards, with expectation that humanity can adapt to climate change and find ways to minimize effects via advanced technologies.

We suggest that this viewpoint fails to appreciate the nature of the threat posed by ice sheet instability and sea level rise. If the ocean continues to accumulate heat and increase melting of marine-terminating ice shelves of Antarctica and Greenland, a point will be reached at which it is impossible to avoid large scale ice sheet disintegration with sea level rise of at least several meters. The economic and social cost of losing functionality of all coastal cities is practically incalculable. We suggest that a strate- gic approach relying on adaptation to such consequences is unacceptable to most of humanity, so it is important to understand this threat as soon as possible.

The full report is available at this link → http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015.pdf

National Climate Assessment Report: Climate Change is Here

In May 2014, the U.S. Global Change Research Program released the Third National Climate Assessment, the authoritative and comprehensive report on climate change and its impacts in the United States.

Evidence for changes in Earth’s climate can be found from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans. Researchers from around the world have compiled this evidence using satellites, weather balloons, thermometers at surface stations, and many other types of observing systems that monitor the Earth’s weather and climate. The sum total of this evidence tells an unambiguous story: the planet is warming.



More at www.globalchange.gov

Assessing "Dangerous Climate Change": Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature

This paper, by an international team of scientists, points out the clear and present danger that today's children may be handed a deteriorating climate with consequences out of their control. 

Dr. James Hansen

by James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, Makiko Sato, Valerie Masson-Delmotte, Frank Ackerman, David J. Beerling, Paul J. Hearty, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Shi-Ling Hsu, Camille Parmesan, Johan Rockstrom, Eelco J. Rohling, Jeffrey Sachs, Pete Smith, Konrad Steffen, Lise Van Susteren, Karina von Schuckmann, James C. Zachos

We conclude that the widely accepted target of limiting human-made global climate warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial level is too high and would subject young people, future generations and nature to irreparable harm. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel use must be reduced rapidly to avoid irreversible consequences such as sea level rise large enough to inundate most coastal cities and extermination of many of today's species. Unabated global warming would also worsen climate extremes. In association with summer high pressure systems, warming causes stronger summer heat waves, more intense droughts, and wildfires that burn hotter. Yet because warming causes the atmosphere to hold more water vapor, which is the fuel that drives thunderstorms, tornadoes and tropical storms, it also leads to the possibility of stronger storms as well as heavier rainfall and floods. Observational data reveal that some climate extremes are already increasing in response to warming of several tenths of a degree in recent decades; these extremes would likely be much enhanced with warming of 2°C or more.

We use evidence from Earth's climate history and measurements of Earth's present energy imbalance as our principal tools for inferring climate sensitivity and the safe level of global warming. The inferred warming limit leads to a limit on cumulative fossil fuel emissions.

It is assessed that humanity must aim to keep global temperature close to the range occurring in the past 10,000 years, the Holocene epoch, a time of relatively stable climate and stable sea level during which civilization developed.

Read more here →

The American Party

James Hansen

My remarks when receiving the Ridenhour Courage Award were written in Union Station on my way to the event. But my concluding comment -- that we are near a point when the American people should contemplate a centrist third party -- was not an idle spur-of-the-moment reflection.

I was in government 40 years, long enough to understand how aging organizations can evolve into self-licking ice cream cones, organizations whose main purpose becomes self-perpetuation rather than accomplishment of their supposed objectives. The public can see this tendency in our politicians, our Congress, and our major political parties.

Our government has failed to address climate, energy, and economic challenges. These challenges, addressed together, actually can be a great opportunity. Our democracy and economic system still have great potential for innovation and rapid adoption of improved technologies, if the government provides the right conditions and gets out of the way.

Read more→

Awakening the Sleeping Giant of Climate Skepticism

by Joanna Benn 

This Friday, the widely anticipated and long-awaited state of the Earth and its climate will be released by the UN’s climate assessment body, the IPCC. 

In a pre-emptive strike, the right wing media last week launched a full front attack to discredit the climate science using leaked drafts. In the past week, we've seen a host of vitriolic ‘they got it all wrong’ stories ranging from the Mail on Sunday to Rupert Murdoch's The Australian and the Wall Street Journal.

For most of us, being non-climate scientists, it is confusing to make sense of the facts and counter- arguments. If one takes out opinion and ideology and leaves it to the scientists, which seems a good strategy to me– the next stage for climate skeptics is to discredit them.

Read more→

Unearthed Comics

New editorial art from Sara Zimmerman of Unearthed Comics:

More comics→

Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

Bill McKibben has written an important article on the terrifying new math of climate change. He defines the three numbers we should be following and what they mean. The Environmentalist endorses this article and requests our readers work to make it viral. The article was published by Rolling Stone: 

When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic. But to grasp the seriousness of our predicament, you just need to do a little math.


Please read and share: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719

The Ethical Practice of Torch-Passing

by William S. Becker

In the Olympics of living, there used to be a moment when an older generation “passed the torch” to the next generation in line.

In his inaugural speech a half-century ago, John Kennedy declared, “The Torch has been passed to a new generation."

Washington Post columnist David Broder used the same phrase when Bill Clinton became the first baby-boomer to be elected President of the United States, shaped by influences far different than his predecessors experienced during World War II.

After the disenchanted class pitched their tents in the streets last year, journalist Gregory Stanford wrote: “The nation’s Occupy movement has picked up the torch that Martin Luther King Jr. once carried to light the path to justice.” National Review blogger Mark Steyn used the same phrase last December in an analysis of events in Egypt.

But today, as the leading edge of the baby boom generation reaches the traditional torch-passing age, the tradition is obsolete. The mores, norms, policies and behaviors of past generations have left the torch in far too poor a condition to pass in good conscience. Insofar as we can fix it, we all need to get a grip: Baby Boomers as well as Generations X, Y and Z. Continued...

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Welcome to the Rest of Our Lives

Grandparents Oppose Tar Sands

by Dr. James Hansen

Alberta tar sands are estimated to be 240 GtC (gigatons of carbon); see Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007) Working Group 3 report. That is about seven times greater than the cumulative historical CO2 emissions from oil use by the U.S. (36 GtC). U.S. oil use was 28% of global oil use for the cumulative amounts over the past 200 years. So Alberta tar sands contain about twice the total amount of carbon emitted by global oil use in history.

Yet some people argue that tar sands are not so great that we need to be concerned about their effect on climate. They argue that only about 40 GtC of the tar sands are presently economically extractable. However, if an addiction to tar sands is established, as it would be with big pipelines, you can be confident that the addiction would lead eventually to ways of cooking the oil out of most of the tar sands. Moreover, these numbers do not include the emissions from conventional fossil fuels used to mine and process the tar sands into useable fuel. Nor do they include the other greenhouse gas emissions produced by the mining and processing.

The global stampede to find every possible fossil fuel is not being opposed by governments, no matter how dirty the fuels nor how senseless the energy strategy is from long-term economic and moral perspectives. Instead governments are forcing the public to subsidize the polluters.  Continued...

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A New Climate Reality: What Happens Now?

by Janet Ritz

In a prior post, A New Climate Reality, I wrote how difficult it has been for specialists to face the more personal aspects of climate change. Some of those who know the science and say, yes, this is really happening, are more easily drawn to the lure of cold data over harsh reality, while those who don't believe take out their fear on those who do in a bizarre spate of bullying that seems to have become the norm in our sadly coarsened society. 

"The world changes so fast, it's difficult to see it in context. Scientists watch from a mathematical point of view, points on a graph, comparative analyses, blips on radar from sensors slapped on the bows of ships. Dry bits of brain matter fight the brain freeze caused by information overload of drought in the Southwest, typhoon-caused floods in Bangladesh, tornadoes in the Midwest, and where's all that snow coming from? It begins to look horrifyingly familiar: one person's agony is another's data." 

That may change. A year ago, the world shivered in unexpected blizzards the scientists warned were like a defrosting freezer as the cold air of the warming arctic rushed south. Just wait until next year, the caution came, when enough of the ice is gone and we really start to heat up. 

NPR tackled this recently on an episode of Fresh Air entitled: "Sunny Days are Here Again -- But is that Good?" where they posit that the early spring is more than just warm weather.  Continued...

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Public Perception of Climate Change and the New Climate Dice

by James Hansen^a, Makiko Sato^a, Reto Ruedy^b

Should the public be able to recognize that climate is changing, despite the notorious variability of weather and climate from day to day and year to year?

We investigate how the probability of unusually warm seasons has changed in recent decades, with emphasis on summer, when changes are likely to have the greatest practical effects. We show that the odds of an unusually warm season have increased greatly over the past three decades, but also the shape of the frequency distribution has changed so as to enhance the likelihood of extreme events.

A new category of hot summertime outliers, more than three standard deviations (3σ) warmer than climatology, has emerged, with the occurrence of these outliers having increased 1-2 orders of magnitude in the past three decades. Thus we can state with a high degree of confidence that extreme summers, such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010, are a consequence of global warming, because global warming has dramatically increased their likelihood of occurrence.  Continued...

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The New Climate Dice

by Dr. James Hansen

Several people have asked for a referenceable version of our paper "Public Perception of Climate Change and the New Climate Dice", so we have placed the current version on arXiv, the permanent storage for physics preprints. This is the version of the paper submitted to Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. with favorable reviews by Tom Karl and Andrew Weaver, so presumably it is the final version. In any case, arXiv is a permanent storage place of this version. You can find it at arXiv with referencing information or get a PDF from my web site or directly here.

Part A of the first figure in the paper (available as a PDF from my web site) makes clear why extreme anomalies are beginning to pop up all over the place. Summer anomalies over land are the most important, as discussed in the paper. Averaged over a decade the frequency distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies is shifting rapidly toward more extreme hot anomalies, and the distribution is becoming broader (greater extremes). Because the planet is out of energy balance, we can conclude that next decade the distribution will be shifted even further to the right.

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Scientific Case for Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change to Protect Young People and Nature

by James Hansen^a,1,2,3, Pushker Kharecha^a, Makiko Sato^a, Frank Ackerman^b, Paul J. Hearty^c,Ove Hoegh-Guldberg^d, Shi-Ling Hsu^e, Fred Krueger^f, Camille Parmesan^g, Stefan Rahmstorf^h, Johan Rockstromⁱ, Eelco J. Rohling^j, Jeffrey Sachs^k, Pete Smith^l, Konrad Steffen^m, Lise Van Susterenⁿ, Karina von Schuckmann^o, James C. Zachos^p

Summary. Humanity is now the dominant force driving changes of Earth's atmospheric composition and thus future climate (1). The principal climate forcing is carbon dioxide (CO2) from fossil fuel emissions, much of which will remain in the atmosphere for millennia (1, 2). The climate response to this forcing and society's response to climate change are complicated by the system's inertia, mainly due to the ocean and the ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica. This inertia causes climate to appear to respond slowly to this human-made forcing, but further long-lasting responses may be locked in. We use Earth’s measured energy imbalance and paleoclimate data, along with simple, accurate representations of the global carbon cycle and temperature, to define emission reductions needed to stabilize climate and avoid potentially disastrous impacts on young people, future generations, and nature. We find that global CO2 emissions reduction of about 6%/year is needed, along with massive reforestation.

Governments have recognized the need to limit emissions to avoid dangerous human made climate change, as formalized in the Framework Convention on Climate Change (3), but only a few nations have made substantial progress in reducing emissions. Continued...

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Earth Hour 2012

Hundreds of millions of people, businesses and governments around the world unite each year to support the largest environmental event in history – Earth Hour. 
More than 5,200 cities and towns in 135 countries worldwide switched off their lights for Earth Hour 2011, sending a powerful message for action on climate change. It also ushered in a new era with members going Beyond the Hour to commit to lasting action for the planet. Without a doubt, it’s shown how great things can be achieved when people come together for a common cause.

Earth Hour: March 31st, 2012, 8:30pm - your local time.

Turn off your lights, don't drive, commit to a new lifestyle - what will you do?

earthhour.org

UN: Climate, Food Pressures Require Rethink on Water

The United Nations has completed a study calling for a radical rethink on the use of water worldwide.

The world's water supply is being strained by climate change and the growing food, energy and sanitary needs of a fast-growing population, according to a United Nations study that calls for a radical rethink of policies to manage competing claims. 

"Freshwater is not being used sustainably," UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova said in a statement. "Accurate information remains disparate, and management is fragmented ... the future is increasingly uncertain and risks are set to deepen."

Read more →

Why I Must Speak Out About Climate Change

by James Hansen

This presentation in the TED series took place on February 29, 2012.  

Dr. James Hansen heads the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and is Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University’s Earth Institute.  He was trained in physics and astronomy in the space science program of Dr. James Van Allen at the University of Iowa. His early research on the clouds of Venus helped identify their composition as sulfuric acid. Since the late 1970s, he has focused his research on Earth's climate, especially human-made climate change.  Link.