Climate Letter #1605

A comprehensive new study reveals how much the planet has been greening, and describes all of the different reasons (Boston University).  In this first of a kind study an international team took a closer look at 250 scientific studies, land-monitoring satellite data and climate and environmental models, and also made field observations.  Much of the information they gathered is relatively new and puts the entire picture of global warming—past, present and future—in better perspective.  There is too much interesting material to summarize, so be sure to give this story a good close look.
https://phys.org/news/2020-01-planet-greener-global.html?

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–The full study has open access and is clearly written. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43017-019-0001-x#Abs1
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The latest information from West Antarctica’s largest glacier, while inconclusive, eases fears of rapid disintegration (University of Bristol).  Pine Island glacier is potentially more worrisome, near term, than any other on the continent:  “…different model projections of future mass loss give conflicting results; some suggesting mass loss could dramatically increase over the next few decades, resulting in a rapidly growing contribution to sea level, while others indicate a more moderate response.”  The new information shows a number of changes in behavior that on balance favor a loss of mass “not quite as fast as some model simulations suggested.”  Which is very good news.
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Michael Mann, on sabbatical in Australia, notes how the fires are having a strong effect on public attitudes toward climate change (The Guardian).  A public that has been listening to politicians is now less willing to ignore what scientists have to say.  “If there can possibly be a silver lining to the clouds of smoke from the bushfires, it is that they are galvanising public opinion, making it clear that deniers’ and delayers’ rhetoric is a smokescreen to cover for the fossil-fuel industry.”
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Today, “business as usual,” otherwise known as the worst case scenario, is not what it used to be (Inside Climate News).  Based on what humans have already done about cutting emissions, scientists no longer think there is a chance of temperatures increasing by as much as 5C in this century—such as indicated by the familiar RCP8.5 scenario that is commonly used as a standard of comparison along with several other possibilities.  “Based on the best science available today, the authors said, the worst case climate outcome would more likely be a rise of about 3 degrees Celsius in average global temperature by 2100.  That increase…would still spawn deadly heat waves, crop failures and extreme storms, and doom most of the world’s glaciers corals and glaciers. And the world will keep warming after 2100.”  (In fact some new models do see a 5C or more increase beyond 2100 based on physical changes that could occur solely as feedbacks to the warming caused by humans, but these are not well understood.)
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Russian scientists believe they have found the key to making significant improvements in the production of power from nuclear reactors (Tomsk Polytechnic University).  “The proposed thorium hybrid reactor is distinguished from today’s nuclear reactors by moderate power, relatively compact size, high operational safety, and a low level of radioactive waste…..makes it possible to replace up to 95 percent of fissile uranium with thorium, which ensures the impossibility of an uncontrollable nuclear reaction.”
Carl

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