Climate Letter #559

Year-end extreme weather wrap-up.  Major happenings are almost everywhere, on every continent (except Antarctica.)  Most of the blame can go to El Nino, amplified by the unusual warming of both oceans and atmosphere.

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Some of the worst flooding has been in the UK:
Much the same in South America:
In the US, flooding, while severe, has been overshadowed by a sweep of tornadoes.
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Will this year break a record for the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere?  That has hardly been mentioned, but I think it is possible.  The record was plus-2.93 ppm, set back in 1998, thanks mostly to massive Indonesian peatland fires, which were associated with the great El Nino event of 1997-8.  This year, as reported before, the November-to-November increase was 2.89 ppm, which means the month of December will be critical .  We won’t know the final result until about January 7, but the signs are not good.  Unofficial daily figures (all of these are from Mauna Loa) are available at this website:
The daily numbers can skip around quite a bit, but you may see there was a scary plus-3.50 for one day-over-day on December 26.  Finally, we still have to worry about 2016, which will be more like 1998 than was 2015 in terms of how El Nino processes typically unfold over two calendar years.  All of the historical data for CO2 growth, including a bar graph, can be found by opening another website and scrolling down.  http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
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What is happening to “old” Arctic sea ice, visualized.  Videos showing the decline of total Arctic sea ice over the years are familiar.  Now the same thing has been done just for sea ice that has lasted two or more years without melting, starting in 1990.  This normally more stable type of ice is well on its way to disappearing, leaving nothing but one-year ice, paving the way for seasons of completely open water when it all breaks up.
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An enormous methane leak near Los Angeles.  It is being compared to the BP oil spill of 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, and just as hard to contain.  Note that 1700 homes have been evacuated.  This was entirely the result of careless human energy supply activity, which is also represented by countless leaks on a smaller scale, adding greatly to total greenhouse gas emissions.  This will no longer happen once the task of replacement with renewables is finished.
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A utility is reducing coal input while adding wind power instead of natural gas.  This policy has been chosen in spite of sharply falling gas prices.  It says something about how cheap wind has gotten, at least in the Upper Midwest, and also how undesirable gas has become for a number of reasons.
Carl

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