Climate Letter #2123

Yesterday’s letter was focused on a review of a new scientific study that contains a great deal of valuable information in spite of its rather cryptic presentation.  One of the four authors, V. Ramanathan, who was born in India in 1944, is renowned for his many outstanding contributions to climate science.  You might take a minute to peruse his biography:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veerabhadran_Ramanathan.  The other three authors are all Chinese.  I have spent more time reading the study, mainly looking for any kind of reference to the phenomena known as atmospheric rivers, plus their precipitable water content, which was unsuccessful.  The reading did make it clear that these authors are deeply concerned with the relationship between global surface temperatures and humidity for one particular reason that is very special indeed:  the looming threat of dangerously high wet-bulb temperatures in certain parts of the world, including much of southeast Asia.  Here again is the link to the study, which refers to these temperatures throughout as WBGT:  https://www.pnas.org/content/119/6/e2117832119. Today I want to reproduce a number of key findings, with a bit of my italics added.

The term Thetae_sfc is employed as a metric representing a combination two separate classes of energy.  One is heat energy as measured by everyday temperature readings.  The other is the latent energy of water vapor, or humidity, which is expressed in a number of different ways, other than just more heat, upon being released when the vapor condenses.  This energy can also be measured in terms of degrees, but on a different scale, with a different value for each degree. The second type can then be converted into numbers equivalent to the first, allowing the two scales to be combined into the one based on heat. In that mode it represents something that can be called “potential temperature” in the vernacular, or else Thetae_sfc, by scientists.  Thetae_sfc has a disturbing tendency to increase at a faster rate than heat temperature alone when heat temperature is on the rise, like it is today, and the rate is found to be accelerating.  An increase in many kinds of extreme weather events is one consequence.  Another consequence is an accelerated compression of the biological marker of wet-bulb temperature, beyond which a human individual is unable to survive after only a brief exposure. Having a single metric could be put to good use in tropical and other hot regions as a warning signal of encroaching danger.

” The magnitude of the Thetae_sfc trends is significantly different from that of SAT (Surface Air Temperature).. Thetae_sfc has much larger temporal variations than SAT, and the linear trend (1.48 °C) is roughly double that of SAT (0.79 °C) in the observations…..When measured by SAT, the tropical warming is only 31% of the NH polar warming, known as the Arctic amplification phenomenon, but Thetae_sfc trend in the tropics is more than half of that in the Arctic…..For future changes, the tropical amplification of the Thetae_sfc trends is nearly comparable to the polar amplification of SAT in NH…..Partitioning the Thetae_sfc trends in terms of the temperature trends and moisture trends shows that the tropical and subtropical Thetae_sfc trend is mainly contributed by the moisture component…..With unchecked emissions of GHGs, the future changes of Thetae_sfc can be even more pronounced…..Thetae_sfc increases at an increasingly faster rate, reaching 4.9 and 12.5 °C higher than the preindustrial era by 2039 and the end of the 21st century, respectively…..The regional changes by the end of the century can be as much as 16 °C in both the tropics and NH polar regions….. Heat waves, as measured by extremes (hottest 5% in daily mean values) in WBGT, are highly correlated with the tropical mean Thetae_sfc…..the extreme WBGT trend is considerably higher in the mean Thetae_sfc trend than the mean SAT trend….. As the global mean Thetae_sfc increases, future heat extremes become more severe…..Presently, extreme WBGT in many parts of the world (India, eastern China, eastern United States, and northern Australia), has already reached 32 °C, an extreme level of risk for outdoor activities. An increase in WBGT extremes beyond the current extremes would be debilitating, particularly for the vulnerable population of 3 billion or more and for many ecosystems….. WBGTs exceeding 35 °C (equal to 95F with 100% relative humidity) pose hazardous levels of risks to human health.”

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In short, according to these authors, this is happening faster than we think, and is heading for a climax sooner than anyone predicted.

Carl

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