Climate Letter #1608

New findings about ocean currents show human causation and suggest that global climate is affected (Science – AAAS).  Global mean oceanic circulation has been speeding up since the early 1990s, mainly driven by winds, for reasons that in large part cannot be naturally explained.  From the Abstract, “The increasing trend in kinetic energy is particularly prominent in the global tropical oceans, reaching depths of thousands of meters.”  The authors see this as an emerging trend, driven by the heating of greenhouse gases, resulting in a more rapid delivery of heat from the surface to deeper ocean layers—more effectively so in the Pacific than the Atlantic.  (This activity could help to explain why the Southern Hemisphere lags so far behind the Northern with respect to surface warming.)

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–The study has open access and for the most part is clearly written:
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How to comprehend the amount of heat being stored in the oceans, which set a new record in 2019 (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).  Dana Nuccitelli, who helped to popularize the idea of comparing the oceanic absorption to the heat energy from Hiroshima bomb explosions, is the best person to do the explaining.  His group started off with an equivalent of four explosions per second in 2012, but in recent years the number has gone up to five as measurements improved.  “For the record, as of the writing of this article, our climate has accumulated the equivalent of a total of more than 2.8 billion Hiroshima bombs’ worth of heat since 1998.”  Almost all of that energy is still in the water, at various depths, adding new increments of growth year after year.
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A new broad-based climate report shows scientists deeply concerned by overlapping crises that could trigger systemic collapse (Phys.org).  Based on a survey of 200 top scientists, “Climate change, extreme weather events from hurricanes to heatwaves, the decline of life-sustaining ecosystems, food security and dwindling stores of fresh water—each poses a monumental challenge to humanity in the 21st century.  In combination, they have the potential to impact and amplify one another in ways that might cascade to create global systemic collapse.”  What was once mainly treated as a theory is now much closer to reality.
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Certain tropical regions that have acted as a safe haven for a multitude of species over millions of years are now in danger of overheating (The Guardian).  According to a new study, “Species that have evolved in tropical regions such as Australia’s wet tropics, the Guinean forests of Western Africa and the Andes Mountains will come under increasing stress as the planet warms.”  These are places that stayed relatively cool when nearby regions that overlapped with them, and were full of biodiversity, became exposed to dangerous heat waves in the past.  This made it convenient for many species to migrate and further evolve in places of safety.  Current changes mean the places that once were stable are now becoming unstable, leaving few options for further migration.
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How one meter of sea level rise will affect the world’s airports (Thomson Reuters Foundation).  “An analysis by the Washington-based World Resources Institute (WRI) found that with 1 meter (3.3 ft) of sea-level rise, an estimated 80 airports globally would be swamped by 2100.….even if the Paris Agreement goal to limit the planet’s temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times is met, the researchers estimated that 44 airports in low-lying areas could be flooded by likely sea-level rise of about half a meter.”  A number of US airports are exposed and making preparations for adaptation.
Carl

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