Warmer than Expected Antarctica, & Glacier Support

[Halbhh]

T-shirt temperature.

"The U.N. weather agency said Friday that an Argentine research base on the northern tip of Antarctica is reporting a temperature that, if confirmed, could be a record high for the icy continent.

World Meteorological Organization spokeswoman Clare Nullis, citing figures from Argentina's national weather service, said the Esperanza base recorded 18.3 degrees C elsius ( 64.9 Fahrenheit) on Thursday—topping the former record of 17.5 degrees tallied in March 2015.
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-antarctica-temperature-high.html

Also warmer than expected water under Thwaites Glacier:

"...at the base of the ice on the grounding line, the team found that the water was 2 degrees Celsius above the normal freezing point. [A surprise]

(antarcticglaciers.org/CC BY-NC 4.0)

The team collected seismic and radar measurements, took cores from the seafloor, and used Icefin on five missions – including one intended to get as close as possible to the intersection of the ice and seafloor.

"We saw amazing ice interactions driven by sediments at the line and from the rapid melting from warm ocean water," added Schmidt.
Scientists Grab First Glimpse Deep Underneath Antarctica's Unstable Thwaites Glacier

!

This is a big deal.

If the restraining fails this one glacier could do a global sea level rise on the order of 26 inches.

So far we've only had on the order of about 4 inches roughly in my lifetime.

6 times as much would be pretty world changing for major coastal cities like New York. They'd need science fiction movie style sea walls, if even possible. Maybe it could be goodbye to Miami, I wonder.

 

[AvgJoe]

Media outlets have been covering melting of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica as proof of global warming. But scientists have known all along that the glacier is a bunch of ice on top of some major geothermal hotspots including active volcanoes.

 

[Halbhh]

What an interesting potential wildcard there.

Speaking of volcanoes, that's one hypothesized source of large surges in CO2, which are thought to explain the very warm periods in the past 500 million years. Today of course we are surging CO2 ourselves.

Here's another surprising possible mechanism for positive feedback though after getting warm enough:

A picture emerged of a brief, cataclysmic hot spell 56 million years ago, now known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). After heat-trapping carbon leaked into the sky from an unknown source, the planet, which was already several degrees Celsius hotter than it is today, gained an additional 6 degrees. The ocean turned jacuzzi-hot near the equator and experienced mass extinctions worldwide. On land, primitive monkeys, horses and other early mammals marched northward, following vegetation to higher latitudes. The mammals also miniaturized over generations, as leaves became less nutritious in the carbonaceous air. Violent storms ravaged the planet; the geologic record indicates flash floods and protracted droughts. As Kennett put it, “Earth was triggered, and all hell broke loose.”

The PETM doesn’t only provide a past example of CO2-driven climate change; scientists say it also points to an unknown factor that has an outsize influence on Earth’s climate. When the planet got hot, it got really hot. Ancient warming episodes like the PETM were always far more extreme than theoretical models of the climate suggest they should have been. Even after accounting for differences in geography, ocean currents and vegetation during these past episodes, paleoclimatologists find that something big appears to be missing from their models — an X-factor whose wild swings leave no trace in the fossil record.

Evidence is mounting in favor of the answer that experts have long suspected but have only recently been capable of exploring in detail. “It’s quite clear at this point that the answer is clouds,” said Matt Huber, a paleoclimate modeler at Purdue University.

Clouds currently cover about two-thirds of the planet at any moment. But computer simulations of clouds have begun to suggest that as the Earth warms, clouds become scarcer. With fewer white surfaces reflecting sunlight back to space, the Earth gets even warmer, leading to more cloud loss. This feedback loop causes warming to spiral out of control.

A World Without Clouds

 

[SkyWriting]

T-shirt temperature.

"The U.N. weather agency said Friday that an Argentine research base on the northern tip of Antarctica is reporting a temperature that, if confirmed, could be a record high for the icy continent.

World Meteorological Organization spokeswoman Clare Nullis, citing figures from Argentina's national weather service, said the Esperanza base recorded 18.3 degrees C elsius ( 64.9 Fahrenheit) on Thursday—topping the former record of 17.5 degrees tallied in March 2015.
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-antarctica-temperature-high.html

Also warmer than expected water under Thwaites Glacier:

"...at the base of the ice on the grounding line, the team found that the water was 2 degrees Celsius above the normal freezing point. [A surprise]

(antarcticglaciers.org/CC BY-NC 4.0)

The team collected seismic and radar measurements, took cores from the seafloor, and used Icefin on five missions – including one intended to get as close as possible to the intersection of the ice and seafloor.

"We saw amazing ice interactions driven by sediments at the line and from the rapid melting from warm ocean water," added Schmidt.
Scientists Grab First Glimpse Deep Underneath Antarctica's Unstable Thwaites Glacier

!

This is a big deal.

If the restraining fails this one glacier could do a global sea level rise on the order of 26 inches.

So far we've only had on the order of about 4 inches roughly in my lifetime.

6 times as much would be pretty world changing for major coastal cities like New York. They'd need science fiction movie style sea walls, if even possible. Maybe it could be goodbye to Miami, I wonder.

They found heat coming from the land under the ice sheets.
There is no good excuse to build cities near sea level.
Lazy people who do get what they have coming.
If you drive the California coastline you'll see road signs about
waves that could wash out the road.

 

[dqhall]

T-shirt temperature.

"The U.N. weather agency said Friday that an Argentine research base on the northern tip of Antarctica is reporting a temperature that, if confirmed, could be a record high for the icy continent.

World Meteorological Organization spokeswoman Clare Nullis, citing figures from Argentina's national weather service, said the Esperanza base recorded 18.3 degrees C elsius ( 64.9 Fahrenheit) on Thursday—topping the former record of 17.5 degrees tallied in March 2015.
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-antarctica-temperature-high.html

Also warmer than expected water under Thwaites Glacier:

"...at the base of the ice on the grounding line, the team found that the water was 2 degrees Celsius above the normal freezing point. [A surprise]

(antarcticglaciers.org/CC BY-NC 4.0)

The team collected seismic and radar measurements, took cores from the seafloor, and used Icefin on five missions – including one intended to get as close as possible to the intersection of the ice and seafloor.

"We saw amazing ice interactions driven by sediments at the line and from the rapid melting from warm ocean water," added Schmidt.
Scientists Grab First Glimpse Deep Underneath Antarctica's Unstable Thwaites Glacier

!

This is a big deal.

If the restraining fails this one glacier could do a global sea level rise on the order of 26 inches.

So far we've only had on the order of about 4 inches roughly in my lifetime.

6 times as much would be pretty world changing for major coastal cities like New York. They'd need science fiction movie style sea walls, if even possible. Maybe it could be goodbye to Miami, I wonder.

January 2020 was the warmest month on record:
January 2020 becomes Earth’s warmest January on record

 

[dqhall]

View attachment 271818

Media outlets have been covering melting of the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica as proof of global warming. But scientists have known all along that the glacier is a bunch of ice on top of some major geothermal hotspots including active volcanoes.

Some attributed fluctuations in temperatures to solar activity. This NASA graph shows the recent surge in global warming disconnected from changes in sunspots and solar activity:
Graphic: Temperature vs Solar Activity – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the

 

[pitabread]

January 2020 was the warmest month on record:
January 2020 becomes Earth’s warmest January on record

So much for the AGW-denialist claims that the Earth was supposed to start cooling again.

 

[Halbhh]

So much for the AGW-denialist claims that the Earth was supposed to start cooling again.

That total fantasy is still limping along somewhere? Of course we hear stranger stuff, like flat earth, and other conspiracy..........ah, that's it. It's a conspiracy theory. Ok, so that means it will last about 50 or 100 years, even if Miami is permanently flooded, etc.

 

[AvgJoe]

Careful reading of the most recent report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals that their official expectation is of no more than a 0.5 degrees rise in global temperatures by the end of this century (2100).

UN IPCC Admission: Negligible Climate Change by end of the Century | PSI Intl

 

[Halbhh]

Careful reading of the most recent report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals that their official expectation is of no more than a 0.5 degrees rise in global temperatures by the end of this century (2100).

UN IPCC Admission: Negligible Climate Change by end of the Century | PSI Intl

I read at that website for a few minutes. After a lot of creaky sounding ideas --

"If you have to create some invisible entity to make your theory right, your theory is wrong. The law of gravity should have been discarded when the concept of energy and the conservation of energy was established. "
A New Theory of Gravity? | PSI Intl

I arrived at this sentence:

"Newton’s assertion that an object will travel in a straight line unless a force acts upon it, is wrong. "

At which point I stopped wasting my time reading there.

You should also stop wasting your time reading there.

If you want real science news, here's a good site:
https://phys.org

 

[AvgJoe]

I read at that website for a few minutes. After a lot of creaky sounding ideas --

"If you have to create some invisible entity to make your theory right, your theory is wrong. The law of gravity should have been discarded when the concept of energy and the conservation of energy was established. "
A New Theory of Gravity? | PSI Intl

I arrived at this sentence:

"Newton’s assertion that an object will travel in a straight line unless a force acts upon it, is wrong. "

At which point I stopped wasting my time reading there.

You should also stop wasting your time reading there.

If you want real science news, here's a good site:
https://phys.org

I wasn't too interested in reading anything past, the copied portion, of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, that verified the opening statements of the article, that the UN IPCC reveals that their official expectation is of no more than, a negligible, 0.5 degrees rise in global temperatures by the end of this century (2100). Recent wild claims have been as high as 6 degrees, by 2050.

The copied portion of the report, from the article:

A.2. Warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise, with associated impacts (high confidence), but these emissions alone are unlikely to cause global warming of 1.5°C. (Emphasis added)

A.2.1. Anthropogenic emissions (including greenhouse gases, aerosols and their precursors) up to the present are unlikely to cause further warming of more than 0.5°C over the next two to three decades (high confidence) or on a century time scale. (Emphasis added)

Then I clicked over to the report, on the IPCC's website, to verify the above, and it's exactly as written in IPCC's report~~~> Summary for Policymakers — Global Warming of 1.5 ºC

 

[dqhall]

I wasn't too interested in reading anything past, the copied portion, of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, that verified the opening statements of the article, that the UN IPCC reveals that their official expectation is of no more than, a negligible, 0.5 degrees rise in global temperatures by the end of this century (2100). Recent wild claims have been as high as 6 degrees, by 2050.

The copied portion of the report, from the article:

A.2. Warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise, with associated impacts (high confidence), but these emissions alone are unlikely to cause global warming of 1.5°C. (Emphasis added)

A.2.1. Anthropogenic emissions (including greenhouse gases, aerosols and their precursors) up to the present are unlikely to cause further warming of more than 0.5°C over the next two to three decades (high confidence) or on a century time scale. (Emphasis added)

Then I clicked over to the report, on the IPCC's website, to verify the above, and it's exactly as written in IPCC's report~~~> Summary for Policymakers — Global Warming of 1.5 ºC

It seems every year there are new heat records. The other day Naples, FL recorded a record high for that day of the year. Before that Antarctica shattered a heat record by more than half a degree to almost 65 F. January 2020 was the hottest January on record on a global basis. Forecasting is not an exact science. People wrote about the future, but had never been there.

 

[essentialsaltes]

The copied portion of the report, from the article:

A.2. Warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise, with associated impacts (high confidence), but these emissions alone are unlikely to cause global warming of 1.5°C. (Emphasis added)

A.2.1. Anthropogenic emissions (including greenhouse gases, aerosols and their precursors) up to the present are unlikely to cause further warming of more than 0.5°C over the next two to three decades (high confidence) or on a century time scale. (Emphasis added)

Did we suddenly stop emitting all greenhouse gases?

 

[Halbhh]

I wasn't too interested in reading anything past, the copied portion, of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, that verified the opening statements of the article, that the UN IPCC reveals that their official expectation is of no more than, a negligible, 0.5 degrees rise in global temperatures by the end of this century (2100). Recent wild claims have been as high as 6 degrees, by 2050.

The copied portion of the report, from the article:

A.2. Warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise, with associated impacts (high confidence), but these emissions alone are unlikely to cause global warming of 1.5°C. (Emphasis added)

A.2.1. Anthropogenic emissions (including greenhouse gases, aerosols and their precursors) up to the present are unlikely to cause further warming of more than 0.5°C over the next two to three decades (high confidence) or on a century time scale. (Emphasis added)

Then I clicked over to the report, on the IPCC's website, to verify the above, and it's exactly as written in IPCC's report~~~> Summary for Policymakers — Global Warming of 1.5 ºC

Good to hear someone looking at the real thing, and I can tell you will like the short video (link below) showing 5 historical IPCC predictions versus actual observations over time! (very interesting to see exact results, less than a minute)

For me, climate predictions and discoveries of new factors have been a 35 year stream of information over time.

Climate prediction is a very complex task, and under continual construction and revamping, kinda all of the time.

Because various scientists will realize that some new factors may need to be incorporated, because they may have significant effect.

(That careful, conservative view from 2017 will be gradually outdated of course, as you begin to see if you routinely read in the research reports such as just general reading of the short well written reports at phys.org in the "Earth Sciences" section. )

Here's the previous 5 IPCC reports compared to actual observed temperatures! (short, 40 second video, very nice quick look):

(See the short video in the early part of the article
Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming? | Carbon Brief

 

[pitabread]

That total fantasy is still limping along somewhere? Of course we hear stranger stuff, like flat earth, and other conspiracy..........ah, that's it. It's a conspiracy theory. Ok, so that means it will last about 50 or 100 years, even if Miami is permanently flooded, etc.

Even just a few years ago there were AGW-deniers here claiming just that. Wonder where they are now?

 

[dqhall]

Good to hear someone looking at the real thing, and I can tell you will like the short video (link below) showing 5 historical IPCC predictions versus actual observations over time! (very interesting to see exact results, less than a minute)

For me, climate predictions and discoveries of new factors have been a 35 year stream of information over time.

Climate prediction is a very complex task, and under continual construction and revamping, kinda all of the time.

Because various scientists will realize that some new factors may need to be incorporated, because they may have significant effect.

(That careful, conservative view from 2017 will be gradually outdated of course, as you begin to see if you routinely read in the research reports such as just general reading of the short well written reports at phys.org in the "Earth Sciences" section. )

Here's the previous 5 IPCC reports compared to actual observed temperatures! (short, 40 second video, very nice quick look):

(See the short video in the early part of the article
Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming? | Carbon Brief

This link you gave is good. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere now exceeds estimated levels for the past 400,000 years. Sea level rise has accelerated. The oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide, causing acidity. This may affect fish populations.

 

[Halbhh]

I wasn't too interested in reading anything past, the copied portion, of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, that verified the opening statements of the article, that the UN IPCC reveals that their official expectation is of no more than, a negligible, 0.5 degrees rise in global temperatures by the end of this century (2100). Recent wild claims have been as high as 6 degrees, by 2050.

The copied portion of the report, from the article:

A.2. Warming from anthropogenic emissions from the pre-industrial period to the present will persist for centuries to millennia and will continue to cause further long-term changes in the climate system, such as sea level rise, with associated impacts (high confidence), but these emissions alone are unlikely to cause global warming of 1.5°C. (Emphasis added)

A.2.1. Anthropogenic emissions (including greenhouse gases, aerosols and their precursors) up to the present are unlikely to cause further warming of more than 0.5°C over the next two to three decades (high confidence) or on a century time scale. (Emphasis added)

Then I clicked over to the report, on the IPCC's website, to verify the above, and it's exactly as written in IPCC's report~~~> Summary for Policymakers — Global Warming of 1.5 ºC

Looking at a recent IPCC special report, from 2019, notice how in the graphic, if we eventually get to net zero carbon emissions (2055 scenario), and also reduce non-carbon important emissions (by 2030), both, then the grey scenario in the graph is the projected model outcome range at this time.

Reading the graph then, we could be close to 1.5C of total accumulated (could get 0.5C more than now)) warming by 2040.

2040 is only 20 years from now. That's kind a new sense of it. We'll be here (probably), experiencing it ourselves (not only our kids), most of us.

Summary for Policymakers — Global Warming of 1.5 ºC

 

[Paulos23]

This link you gave is good. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere now exceeds estimated levels for the past 400,000 years. Sea level rise has accelerated. The oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide, causing acidity. This may affect fish populations.

And shellfish beds. I know of a local oyster grower that had to move to Hawaii because of the acidity rise, and now they water there is rising in acidity, which is not good for growing oysters.

 

[sjastro]

Latest information on lower stratospheric cooling which is the strongest evidence for AGW.

 

[dqhall]

And shellfish beds. I know of a local oyster grower that had to move to Hawaii because of the acidity rise, and now they water there is rising in acidity, which is not good for growing oysters.

This article confirms acidity kills shellfish, but not coral, crabs and sea urchins. Oysters as Catch of the Day? Perhaps not, if ocean acidity keeps rising | YubaNet