Climate Letter #1340

A major new study has details of the rising rate of ice loss from Antarctica (Washington Post).  The author of this study, Eric Rignot, is a veteran researcher in this specialty, whose views command the highest level of respect.  There were four decades of observations employed in making the study, happening just in time to catch the very early stages of what is likely to become an event of whoppingly large proportions for perhaps a couple of centuries.

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–Here is a link giving full access to the report.  By all means, give it a good look.  The conclusion ends with this sentence:  “Our mass balance assessment, combined with prior surveys, suggests that the sector between Cook/Ninnis and West ice shelves may be exposed to CDW (circumpolar deep water—which is warm and salty) and could contribute multimeter SLR (sea level rise) with unabated climate warming.”
–The standard press release from the University of California has some additional comments from Rignot, who seems to have no doubt about a future of “multi-meter sea level rise from Antarctica in the coming centuries.”  He has previously used words like “unstoppable” in a similar context.
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Extra comment:  This story ties in very well with the two lead stories in yesterday’s letter and also the big story in Friday’s letter about new evidence of how fast the ocean waters are being warmed.  Here is one more report on the latter with insights from journalist Jeff Goodell at Rolling Stonehttps://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/oceans-temperatures-rising-778581/.  Jeff makes a good point about the connection between that massive creation of warm water and the massive increase in melting from the underside that is affecting the glaciers of Anarctica and the shelves of sea ice that tend to hold them back.  Our climate is not warming as fast as it could be, were there no heat being soaked up by the oceans, but all that collected heat has now begun making its presence known to us by another means, via the ice melt and sea level route.
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One more thing, with regard to the report that the oceans are absorbing 40% more heat than previously recognized, I have been wondering how to put that finding into a full and proper context, not just letting it hang out as a kind of loose end. It has finally dawned on me that this provides a satisfactory answer to questions about the true level of Earth’s energy imbalance, which has customarily been estimated within a range of about 0.6 to 0.9 watts per square meter, sometimes a bit more or a bit less. The imbalance pertains to incoming absorption of about 240 watts per sqm from the sun, which is a fairly steady amount, while outgoing is being steadily reduced by a small amount due mainly to the addition of greenhouse gases. The imbalance is picked up as an accumulation of heat being stored on or near Earth’s surface plus some that causes a net melting of ice. We have already figured out that 93% of the total is currently being stored in the oceans, leaving just 7% divided between land or air storage and ice melting. Those proportions are best left unchanged, but we can readily narrow down the amount of imbalance, after adding 40% to ocean heat storage, just by moving any estimate as low as 0.6 watt per square meter up to, in this case, 0.84. The higher number is actually more in line with what climate models have been suggesting but could not support by the old-fashioned ways of making direct measurements.
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Finally, the level of imbalance was around zero 300 years ago. Its rise reflects the incredibly rapid rise in greenhouse gas. It should now be peaking, as the rate of the gas rise begins slowing. Oceans will continue to gather heat until the imbalance has eventually disappeared, but more and more of its heat will be applied to melting larger and larger blocks of ice for quite some time. As for air storage, more ice melting should have a beneficial cooling effect for awhile, transmitted through ocean cooling, while it lasts.
Carl

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