Lethal Heating: 12/27/18

27/12/2018

2019 May Be The Warmest Year On Record As A Result Of An El Niño Event Exacerbated By Global Warming

AccuWeather - Amanda Schmidt

Climate scientists warn that 2019 may be the warmest year on record largely as the result of a possible El Niño event exacerbated by man-made global warming.
There is a 90 percent chance that El Niño will form and continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2018-19 and a 60 percent chance that it will continue into the spring of 2019, according to the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
El Niño is a part of a routine climate pattern that occurs when sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean rise to above-normal levels for an extended period of time. It can last anywhere from 4 to 16 months and it typically has a warming influence on the global temperature.
The opposite of El Niño, La Niña, is when sea-surface temperatures in the central Pacific drop to lower-than-normal levels.
These warm and cool phases are part of a recurring climate pattern that occurs across this section of the Pacific, known as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

This is a Monday, Dec. 8, 2014 file photo of birds as they fly past at sun set as smoke emits from a chimney at a factory in Ahmadabad, India. Temperatures have risen almost 1 degree C (1.8 F) since humans started burning fossil fuels — the biggest source of greenhouse gases — on an industrial scale in the 19th century. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki, File)

The strong El Niño of late 2015 to early 2016 helped boost global temperatures to their warmest on record in 2016, according to AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson.
"However, if there was no El Niño during that period, I still suspect that 2016 would have still ranked as the second warmest year on record globally due to the steady increase in greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which trap heat closer to the surface," Anderson said.
So far, 2018 is on pace to likely be the third warmest year on record, behind 2016 and 2017.
"What's interesting is that 2018 started out under La Niña conditions, which usually has a cooling influence on global temperatures, but it was not nearly enough to cancel out the warming from the release of man-made greenhouse gases," Anderson said.
However, since late April 2018, sea-surface temperatures across much of the east-central tropical Pacific returned to neutral levels following the La Niña of 2017-18, meaning neither La Niña or El Niño present.
"Looking back at the data, years with moderate to strong El Niño's continue to trend warmer. If this upcoming El Niño reaches at least moderate strength and persists at least 9 months, then I think that 2019 can end up in the top two warmest on record globally," Anderson said.
The global temperature impacts of El Niño are sometimes delayed. Therefore, 2020 may end up warmer than 2019 even though this upcoming El Niño may be well over by that time.
Global ocean water temperatures in October 2018 ranked as the second warmest on record for October. Oceans can store a lot of heat, thus the world's oceans may remain near or at record warmth through 2019, which will further add to the warming influence of the global air temperature.
It is certainly possible that 2019 may be the warmest year on record, Anderson said.
"I am not ready to say it will be the warmest on record yet. Though I am fairly confident that it will at least rank in the top three regardless of the strength of the El Niño," Anderson said. "Ask me again in March."

In this May 23, 2016, file photo, a man bath his son on a hot afternoon in a slum in Mumbai, India. For the third straight year, Earth set a record for the hottest year, NOAA and NASA announced. NASA says 2016 was warmer than 2015 - by a lot. It's mostly global warming with a little assist from the now-gone El Nino. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File)

The impacts of El Niño have been more severe in recent years due to global warming, and these impacts may be worse as temperatures continue to rise, according to a recent study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, published on Aug. 22.
Emerging research suggests that the typical atmospheric responses to La Niña and El Niño are changing and that the expected weather in the United States may not follow the traditional ENSO pattern.
The AccuWeather Long-Range Team closely follows the on-going research linking climate change to the long-term trends in ENSO patterns, according to AccuWeather Long-Range Meteorologist Max Vido.
"When creating our seasonal forecasts for the U.S., we take into account the long-term climate trends when predicting temperature and precipitation anomalies compared to the 30-year normal (1981-2010)," Vido said.
The team has become increasingly vigilant of how the global weather pattern during more recent El Niño and La Niña events can differ from the traditional expected patterns.
"So, instead of assuming a certain ENSO phase will lead to a particular seasonal weather pattern to areas of the U.S., we acknowledge how the once traditional impacts could be different. This is all factored into our seasonal forecasts," Vido said.

(Data source: NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Credit: NASA/GISS)

As of November 2018, El Niño has not officially begun and questions remain about the strength and longevity of this El Niño.
The years 2014, 2015 2016 and 2017 all rank in the top four warmest years on record globally, ocean and land combined, with data going back to 1880, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
"It's not hard to see that with the potential added boost from another El Niño that 2019, or even 2020, is a pretty good bet to take out some of those years from the top four list," Anderson said.
Seventeen of the 18 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998, which was a strong El Niño year, according to Anderson.
Research shows that the warming climate will have a profound affect on extreme weather events, such as heat waves, wildfires, droughts, flooding and violent storms.
The U.S. government released a report in November 2018 that highlights these impacts. The report examines the effects that climate change will have on health, local communities, the economy and infrastructure.

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'We Have to Show People What’s Going On’

New Republic - Emily Atkin

Climate change is making weather more extreme, and these two veteran photojournalists were on the frontlines in 2018.

Photo courtesy of Noah Berger.

Justin Sullivan, a photojournalist with Getty Images, was watching a KFC restaurant burn to the ground in Paradise, California, when he decided to lay down and take a picture. Thousands of tiny embers flew toward his face as he steadied his camera. Noah Berger, an Associated Press photojournalist nearby, saw Sullivan’s bold move and decided to snap a picture of his own.
It’s hard to say which image is more impressive. On one hand, crouching amid the hot sparks allowed Sullivan—whose photo is below—to capture not only the physical damage from this year’s historic Camp Fire, but the sheer force and speed of its winds. That’s an impressive feat for still photography. (The November wildfire, which killed 88 people and destroyed more than 12,000 structures, saw gusts of up to 60 miles per hour, akin to a strong tropical storm.)

“I started covering wildfires about 20 years ago,” said Justin Sullivan, who took this photo of a burning KFC during the Camp Fire in Paradise, California. “For sure, they’re a lot different now in terms of how big they are, how fast they spread, and how destructive they’ve become.” Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

But Berger’s photo, featured atop this article, nudges the viewer toward a gut-wrenching realization: There are people in there. Of course, he and Sullivan had chosen to be in there, protective gear and all. But they didn’t know, at the time, that they would be inside what would become the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. They were just doing their jobs.
Sullivan insists the embers photo looks a lot more dangerous than it actually was. “It’s not in my nature to put myself in a ridiculous situation where I’m teetering on the edge of life and death,” he said in a phone interview. But extreme-weather photojournalism has always been a dangerous profession, and is becoming more dangerous as climate change worsens. In 2018, photographers were sent to document some of the most extreme weather the country has ever seen—megafires, hurricanes, mudslides, and volcanic eruptions.
Scientists say disasters like these will flourish if the planet continues to warm. Extreme-weather photojournalism is thus becoming more important as it becomes more dangerous. The public must understand the consequences of inaction on climate change, and sometimes words just aren’t enough.

An aerial view of a cul-de-sac where homes used to stand in Paradise, California, after the Camp Fire tore through the town. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Joe Raedle, a Miami-based photojournalist for Getty Images, had a difficult year. His assignments included not only the immediate aftermath of the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, but the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Michael, one of the most powerful storms in history to strike the U.S. mainland.
The increasing danger of reporting on storms like Michael “is not what I worry about,” Raedle told me. “It’s that we have to show people what’s going on.” Weather isn’t simply getting more extreme; it’s increasingly upending people’s lives. “When I’m in there, it’s not about whether you’re taking the best pictures,” he said. “It’s about having compassion for the people you’re taking pictures of, who have lost everything.”
Raedle remembers, for example, a woman named Kathy Coy, standing on top of the rubble that used to be her home. “She had no shoes,” he said. “She was trying to find her medicine. She was standing there on top of her completely destroyed home, trying to figure out how to put her life back together.
“It’s all just...” He paused, and composed himself. “Too much.”

“She was almost in shock,” said Joe Raedle, who took this photo of Kathy Coy searching through the remains of her home in Panama City, Florida, after Hurricane Michael. He said documenting such destructive storms “can be very emotionally draining.” Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Taking photos of people suffering from such trauma is not an easy task. “You have to intrude into somebody’s life when they’re at their most vulnerable and emotionally spent,” said Pancho Bernasconi, Getty Images’ vice president of news. “They have to let you into their lives in that moment.” And some extreme weather events—like wildfires—don’t always lend themselves to human impact photos, because they normally burn far away from cities and towns. “You usually get people looking at fire from far away,” Sullivan said. “You don’t usually get people interacting with fire.”
This year’s Camp Fire—which tore through an entire town with little advance notice—was different. “It wasn’t your typical, ‘We need to be shooting 5 miles away on a hill’ situation,” he said. “This was an in-your-face, right-in-front scenario.” After the fire, photographers were also allowed to accompany mortuary crews on their search for dead bodies. “That’s never happened before,” Sullivan said. “Not in the 20 years I’ve been doing this.”

“We were threatened with physical violence and arrest for trying to be near the mortuary crews during Hurricane Katrina,” said Sullivan, who took this photo of a dog searching for human remains after the Camp Fire. In Paradise, however, “They never stopped letting us follow them.” Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

About a month ago, an article for the BBC argued that climate change has “an inherent image problem.” Polar bears, solar panels, and smokestacks spewing carbon dioxide are commonly used to illustrate the threat, but none of those images are compelling enough to convey how severe and catastrophic global warming will be if no action is taken to slow it down. “Images without people on them are unable to tell a human story,” Adam Corner, a psychologist and the research director of Climate Visuals, told the BBC.
Bernasconi agrees on the power of human-impact photos, and said he envisions more of that type of work from Getty’s staff next year. “It puts you in a place where you can imagine being in the middle of that moment,” he said.
We should all be imagining ourselves in these moments.

“Part of what I want to do when you’re covering these storms is show the human impact of the disaster,” said Raedle, who took this photo after Hurricane Michael. “This guy was sleeping in the back of his pickup truck, five or six days after the hurricane. Here he is, having to sleep in the back, he’s cold, he’s got nowhere to go, his house is destroyed. To me, it’s about the impact of what this is doing to human beings.” Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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In 200 Years, Humans Reversed A Climate Trend Lasting 50 Million Years, Study Says

CNN - Susan Scutti

The Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, is one of 156 World Heritage sites in the coastal Mediterranean endangered by the effects of climate change, according to a study published in Nature Communications.

What do scientists see when comparing our future climate with the past? In less than 200 years, humans have reversed a multimillion-year cooling trend, new research suggests.
If global warming continues unchecked, Earth in 2030 could resemble its former self from 3 million years ago, according to a study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds.
During that ancient time, known as the mid-Pliocene epoch, temperatures were higher by about 2 to 4 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) and sea levels were higher by roughly 20 meters (almost 66 feet) than today, explained Kevin D. Burke, lead author of the study and a researcher and Ph.D. candidate at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Today is "one of the most difficult scenarios we've ever found ourselves in," Burke said. "This is a very rapid period of climatic change. Looking for anything that we can do to curb those emissions is important."
Climate scientists say that our globe is about 1 degree Celsius hotter today than it was between 1850 and 1900 and that this is due in part to gas emissions from cars, planes and other human activities. Some gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, trap heat in the atmosphere, producing a "greenhouse effect" that makes the planet warmer.

Trying to make climate change vivid
The new study is basically "a similarity assessment," Burke said. "We have projections of future climate available for the year 2020, 2030 and so forth." For nearly 30 future decades, then, he and his co-authors drew future-to-past comparisons based on six reference periods.
The reference periods were the Historical, about mid-20th century; the Pre-Industrial, around 1850; the mid-Holocene, about 6,000 years ago; the last Interglacial Period, about 125,000 years ago; the mid-Pliocene, about 3 million years ago; and the early Eocene, about 50 million years ago.
If we continue our current level of greenhouse gas emissions -- what some would say is a "business as usual" scenario -- the overall global climate in 2030 will most closely resemble the overall climate of the mid-Pliocene period, Burke said.
What did Earth look like then? Annual temperatures on average were about 2 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than today, there was little permanent ice cover in the Northern Hemisphere, and the sea level was about 20 meters higher.
In some places, though, including cities in the United States, temperatures in 2030 would be roughly double the global average.
Burke presented a second scenario: If we continue as we are doing now, "we see that by the year 2150, future climates have an analog [or equivalent] coming from the Eocene, the climate of 50 million years before present."
"Proxies and models tell us that it may have been as much as, globally, on average 13 degrees Celsius [about 23 degrees Fahrenheit] warmer than present," Burke said. "During that time period, there was essentially no permanent ice cover in either of the poles, so sea level would have been much higher as well."
Although the geography and configuration of our continents and oceans were different at that time, there may have been swampy forests "as far north as locations in the Arctic Circle," he said.
"Those different possible future outcomes are entirely dependent on the emissions scenario that we follow," he said.
Burke admitted that "the climate in and of itself wouldn't just wipe us out or anything," but "it's important to recognize that it would be a substantially different future."

Disrupting the future of humanity
Flavio Lehner, a project scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, said what's new in the study is the attempt to "draw parallels between past and future climates."
Lehner, who was not involved in the research, said that comparisons to the past typically are complicated by "many uncertainties" that make it challenging to "reconstruct and understand hydroclimate change, even over the last 1,000 years."
"The study here does not magically reduce these uncertainties but seems to circumvent the problem by relying heavily on climate model simulations of past climates," he said. "That's not necessarily a scientific breakthrough but still makes for an interesting study."
Nick Obradovich, a research scientist in the scalable cooperation group at the MIT Media Lab, said "it is well-established that the rate of warming we are currently experiencing is remarkable relative to historical rates of warming."
"Jumping back to climates not seen for millions of years -- in the course of decades -- will likely totally disrupt the future of humanity," said Obradovich, who also was not involved in the research. "It's very possible that both ecological systems and human systems may fail to adapt rapidly enough, with devastating consequences. No one knows exactly how this future will look, but if we don't curtail emissions drastically and immediately, it isn't likely to be a pretty one."
Burke emphasized, "This isn't really a problem for the future; this is a problem for now. What we're showing is that in the next decade or two, we may see climates like that of the Pliocene."
To avoid that future, both political representatives and individuals need to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, he said. Individually, we can take public transport or use bicycles instead of driving, he suggested. And we can eat less of a meat-based or beef-based diet.
"When you think about the number of people who could make a change like that, that could have a significant effect," Burke said. "Anything that we can do to curb those emissions is important."

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