Global Warming Of Oceans Equivalent To An Atomic Bomb Per Second

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

Seas absorb 90% of climate change’s energy as new research reveals vast heating over past 150 years

An Argo float is deployed into the ocean. Photograph: CSIRO

Global warming has heated the oceans by the equivalent of one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years, according to analysis of new research.
More than 90% of the heat trapped by humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions has been absorbed by the seas, with just a few per cent heating the air, land and ice caps respectively. The vast amount of energy being added to the oceans drives sea-level rise and enables hurricanes and typhoons to become more intense.
Much of the heat has been stored in the ocean depths but measurements here only began in recent decades and existing estimates of the total heat the oceans have absorbed stretch back only to about 1950. The new work extends that back to 1871. Scientists have said that understanding past changes in ocean heat was critical for predicting the future impact of climate change.
A Guardian calculation found the average heating across that 150-year period was equivalent to about 1.5 Hiroshima-size atomic bombs per second. But the heating has accelerated over that time as carbon emissions have risen, and was now the equivalent of between three and six atomic bombs per second.
“I try not to make this type of calculation, simply because I find it worrisome,” said Prof Laure Zanna, at the University of Oxford, who led the new research. “We usually try to compare the heating to [human] energy use, to make it less scary.”

She added: “But obviously, we are putting a lot of excess energy into the climate system and a lot of that ends up in the ocean,. There is no doubt.” The total heat taken up by the oceans over the past 150 years was about 1,000 times the annual energy use of the entire global population.
The research has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and combined measurements of the surface temperature of the ocean since 1871 with computer models of ocean circulation.
Prof Samar Khatiwala, also at the University of Oxford and part of the team, said: “Our approach is akin to ‘painting’ different bits of the ocean surface with dyes of different colours and monitoring how they spread into the interior over time. If we know what the sea surface temperature anomaly was in 1871 in the North Atlantic Ocean we can figure out how much it contributes to the warming in, say, the deep Indian Ocean in 2018.”
Rising sea level has been among the most dangerous long-term impacts of climate change, threatening billions of people living in coastal cities, and estimating future rises is vital in preparing defences. Some of the rise comes from the melting of land-bound ice in Greenland and elsewhere, but another major factor has been the physical expansion of water as it gets warmer.
However, the seas do not warm uniformly as ocean currents transport heat around the world. Reconstructing the amount of heat absorbed by the oceans over the past 150 years is important as it provides a baseline. In the Atlantic, for example, the team found that half the rise seen since 1971 at low and middle latitudes resulted from heat transported into the region by currents.
The new work would help researchers make better predictions of sea-level rise for different regions in the future. “Future changes in ocean transport could have severe consequences for regional sea-level rise and the risk of coastal flooding,” the researchers said. “Understanding ocean heat change and the role of circulation in shaping the patterns of warming remain key to predicting global and regional climate change and sea-level rise.”
Dana Nuccitelli, an environmental scientist who was not involved in the new research, said: “The ocean heating rate has increased as global warming has accelerated, and the value is somewhere between roughly three to six Hiroshima bombs per second in recent decades, depending on which dataset and which timeframe is used. This new study estimates the ocean heating rate at about three Hiroshima bombs per second for the period of 1990 to 2015, which is on the low end of other estimates.”

Links

• Sea levels may rise more rapidly due to Greenland ice melt
• Gulf Stream current at its weakest in 1,600 years, studies show
• Finding Nemo? We may be losing him, says climate study
• 'Supreme wake-up call': Prince Charles urges action on ocean pollution
• Walruses face 'death sentence' as Trump administration fails to list them as endangered
• Could techno-fixes and gene therapies really save the world’s coral?
• Melting Arctic ice cap falls to well below average
• The Florida Keys are the canaries in the climate-change coalmine
• Fish under threat from ocean oxygen depletion, finds study
• Scientists to repeat 19th-century ship's crossing of polar ice cap

Climate Triage: Swift Action Is Required To Save Humanity From Dangerous Global Warming

Forbes - Robbie Orvis

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports we have 12 years to dramatically cut emissions to avoid locking in dangerous global warming, but the World Meteorological Organization announced atmospheric emissions are higher than at any point in the past 3-5 million years and emissions grew again in 2018 after several years of zero growth.
After the COP24 climate summit resulted in only moderate outcomes, there’s no doubt we must act swiftly on climate change – we’re now in a state of climate triage.

A raging wildfire consumes the forest next to Highway 63 twenty four kilometres south of Fort McMurray Saturday, May 7, 2016. The "Beast", as it was called by Wood Buffalo fire chief Darby Allen, is a 1500 square kilometre inferno that has prompted the mass evacuation of nearly 90,000 people from the northern Alberta city. (photograph by Chris Schwarz/Government of Alberta) Flickr via Premier of Alberta

Climate change’s damages to our economy are mounting - Hurricanes Michael and Florence, along with two California wildfires, cost roughly $45 billion in 2018 - and each passing day we fail to act makes preventing dangerous global warming much more difficult.
World leaders must assume the role of an emergency room doctor trying to save a patient’s life: Identify the worst threat and take swift action to fix the gravest injuries. For climate, this means identifying where the greatest emissions are coming from and then rapidly decarbonizing those sources.

Assessing the emissions damage
Just like an ER doctor would work fast to identify her patient’s worst injury and stop the bleeding, world leaders must start climate triage by first understanding where the greatest emissions are coming from and where to focus our decarbonization efforts.
Nearly 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from the top 20 emitting countries, so targeting emissions in these 20 countries is the largest and fastest opportunity to reduce emissions, as outlined in Designing Climate Solutions.

Emissions vary widely in the top 20 emitting countries. Energy Innovation

But knowing which countries create the most emissions is not enough; we must identify the biggest sources of emissions. Emissions come from a relatively small set of sources: Burning coal, natural gas, and oil in power plants; burning fossil fuels for electricity and heat in industry; burning oil in car, bus, and truck engines; and burning natural gas, oil, and coal in buildings for heat, cooking, and lighting.
Industrial process emissions, for example methane leaked from natural gas pipes and carbon dioxide (CO₂) released in cement manufacturing chemical processes, are surprisingly significant sources of emissions. Finally, land use emissions are significant in particular countries, making deforestation, which reduces the ability of forests to absorb and store CO₂, an important area to focus on in those countries.

CO2e emissions are primarily from energy and industrial processes. Energy Innovation

World leaders can stop the bleeding to save their patient: In the 20 largest-emitting countries, reduce fossil fuel consumption in power plants, factories, automobiles, and buildings; and cut industrial process emissions.

An action plan for saving the patient
In climate triage, just like a well-trained ER doctor knows how to address injuries, we know how to tackle emissions from each of these sources. In the power sector, we must push more zero-carbon technologies onto the grid, maintain the ones we already have, and retire fossil fuel power plants. The falling costs of wind turbines, solar panels, and batteries mean building new clean energy is cheaper than running existing coal generation in many parts of the world, putting this future in sight.
In industry, we must improve the efficiency of equipment and switch from coal or oil for power and heat to natural gas (or better yet, electricity where possible). Pueblo, Colorado’s EVRAZ steel mill utilizes electric arc furnaces to create heat for steelmaking by relying on electricity rather than coal or gas for heat, thereby avoiding emissions. Reducing process emissions is also a top priority as those emissions often contain potent greenhouse gases much worse for climate change than CO₂.
In the transportation sector, vehicles must consume much less petroleum and switch to low- or zero-carbon fuels like electricity and biofuels. By 2025, the falling costs of electric vehicles will be cheaper than internal combustion engines, helping accelerate the transition to a low-carbon transportation fleet. Similarly, electric buses are nearing cost-competiveness with fossil fuels, empowering zero-carbon public transport while saving cities millions of dollars in maintenance and fuel costs - the city of Shenzhen, China recently replaced its entire fleet of 16,000 diesel buses with electric ones.
Buildings also have significant energy efficiency potential. Better-insulated buildings reduce demand for energy services like heating and cooling, while more efficient equipment further cuts energy demand. The savings from these improvements can be huge, and in many cases pay for themselves over a short time period. Over time, buildings must also become largely electrified.

Climate triage through fast policy action
Climate triage can tackle climate change by decarbonizing the power, industry, transportation, and buildings sectors. Fortunately, decades of global experience with climate and energy policy has proven which policies drive down emissions fastest and cheapest. A small set of well-designed, stringently set policies can put the world on a path to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Policy contributions to meeting the 2°C global warming target. (Analysis done using data with permission from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) Energy Innovation

In the power sector, renewable portfolio standards and feed-in tariffs can push more renewables onto the grid while helping reduce costs for new technologies. Innovative approaches to re-financing power plants and utility regulation can ensure we invest intelligently in the grid of the future while managing early retirement of uneconomic fossil power plants. Together these power sector policies can contribute 21% of necessary emissions reductions.
In industry, strong efficiency standards for motors, boilers, and other equipment can dramatically cut energy and emissions. Better control of process emissions, for example by capturing leaking methane from landfills and natural gas systems or through alternative lower-carbon processes like those being implemented in the iron and steel industry can reduce non-energy emissions. Together, these can deliver 27% of necessary emissions reductions.
In transportation, fuel economy standards and incentives can improve new vehicle efficiency while cutting consumer costs by lowering oil expenditures. New electric vehicle sales mandates, like the 5 million zero-emissions vehicle goal followed by California and nine other states, can help deploy more zero carbon cars, buses, and trucks onto our roads.  Improving urban design through better access to urban transit, improved zoning, and so on, also cuts emissions. Altogether, transportation sector policies can provide 7% of necessary emissions reductions.

Nissan Leaf electric vehicles. Energy Innovation

And in buildings, strong building codes and appliance standards specifying minimum insulation and efficiency requirements can dramatically lower the amount of energy needed to heat, cool, and power our homes – and can contribute 5% of necessary emissions reductions.

A hopeful outlook for tackling climate change
Make no mistake: the task ahead of us is daunting. Climate triage means we must cut our largest emissions and transition to a low-carbon economy over the next decade, and we must act fast.
Getting there will require targeted interventions to reduce the biggest emission sources in the top 20 emitting countries. We have the technology and policy to achieve this goal today. What we need now is rapid implementation of these policies, where it counts.

Links

• We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN
• Climate-heating greenhouse gases at record levels, says UN
• ‘We are in trouble.’ Global carbon emissions reached a record high in 2018.
• We Have A Decade To Prevent Dangerous Climate Change: These 10 Policies Can Limit Warming To 2°C
• Policy Solutions
• Top Policies
• Plunging Prices Mean Building New Renewable Energy Is Cheaper Than Running Existing Coal
• How big is the energy efficiency resource?