08/01/2021

10 Steamy Signs In 2020 That Climate Change Is Speeding Up

Live Science - 

Things are heating up, and not in a good way.

Human-caused climate change has resulted in record rates of glacial melting. (Image: © Shutterstock)
As the world turned its eyes to a dire pandemic, another global catastrophe was not-so-quietly gaining steam: Climate change has been simmering since the Industrial Revolution, but 2020 was a year that really drove home how fast it's accelerating.

We blazed past ominous milestones that were supposed to take decades to arrive, broke records every month, and watched the frozen North melt even faster than anticipated.

From record wildfires to a bumper crop of hurricanes to melting poles, here are some of the biggest signs in 2020 that climate change is speeding up.

Zombie storms are rising from the dead
(Image credit: NOAA/NESDIS/STAR GOES-East Band 13)
As climate change dumps heat into our oceans and atmosphere, there's more energy around to spark hurricanes.

One side effect: Tropical storms that died are being resurrected more often. Case in point: In mid-September, Tropical Storm Paulette formed as a Category 1 before strengthening, then petering out over the Atlantic Ocean five and a half days later. But Paulette was not quite dead.

Paulette opened her eye on Sept. 21, and regained strength to form into a tropical storm.

Such zombie storms used to be rare because hurricanes lost steam as they rolled north into cooler waters, but thanks to climate change, extreme ocean heating is giving them a second boost, Donald Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Live Science.

Extreme heating in the shallow waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where many storms strengthen before slamming into the U.S., could be particularly vulnerable to climate change, Wuebbles said.

Arctic transformation may be permanent
(Image credit: NOAA/Photo courtesy of Caitlin Bailey, GFOE, The Hidden Ocean 2016: Chukchi Borderlands)
Melting sea ice, burning permafrost, retreating glaciers, blistering summer heat and vanishing snow cover — nowhere on Earth has changed as dramatically due to climate change as the Arctic. And that change could be permanent, a disturbing 2020 report suggests. 

The Arctic report card, a yearly summary of the Frozen North's environmental status conducted in part by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows climate change accelerating much more rapidly than was expected.

At this pace, and without drastic action "there's no reason to think that in 30 years anything will be as it is today," Rick Thoman, an Alaska climate specialist with the International Arctic Research Center (IARC) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), said at the time.

What does that mean? Huge swaths of ice-free seas and zombie wildfires as permanent fixtures on land, the experts said.

Godzilla can thank climate change, too
(Image credit: NASA/NOAA, Colin Seftor)
But what happens in the Arctic doesn't stay in the Arctic. This year, a Godzilla dust storm formed in the Sahara, and warming conditions in the Arctic may have fueled its formation, a December study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters found.

During the month of June, a global express train of wind trapped a high-pressure system above northwest Africa, whipping up winds above the Sahara for days.

In the end, this Godzilla dust storm broke records for the biggest one ever, creating a 5,000-mile-long (8,000 kilometers) blob that darkened the skies from the Atlantic to the southeastern United States.

But why blame climate change? The whirling winds in the Sahara may have formed because sea-ice extent was extra low at that time.

This may have created a vast "anomaly" that allowed Arctic winds to creep lower on the globe than they normally do, supercharging the high-pressure system and northeasterly winds that birthed the monster dust storm. 

A deadly hurricane season
(Image credit: NHC/NOAA)
Warming oceans mean more fuel for hurricanes, and 2020 brought proof of that in spades. 

The Atlantic hurricane season shattered records with 30 named storms, many of which were strong and deadly. The next busiest season, in 2005, brought 29 named storms.

The 2020 season started early with Tropical Storm Arthur on May 16, and we barreled through all the named storms on the list by Sept. 14.

The season ended with a bang, as Hurricane Iota strengthened into a 'catastrophic' Category 5 storm — the strongest of the season — with maximum sustained winds of 160 mph (260 km/h).

The season had several other damaging and deadly storms, including Hurricanes Laura and Marco, which devastated the Gulf Coast region. 

Climate change may not fuel any particular storm, and it may not even make storms more common. But accumulating evidence suggests that warming oceans will make storms stronger and more deadly on average.

Greenland may need new maps
(Image credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Global warming is dramatically reshaping Greenland — literally. The coastline is changing thanks to unprecedented ice loss and sea-level rise. Warming, and the resulting ice loss, have changed where glaciers dump their water into the ocean, which could reshape ecosystems around the island, an October study found.

Greenland is losing 500 gigatons of ice every year, way more than can be made up by snowfall. And melting ice has created a giant slip n' slide for the island's massive ice sheet as it moves above the bedrock, meaning even faster melt.

If this process doesn't slow down, the coastline could look very different in the years to come, the study found.

The west was ablaze
(Image credit: NOAA)
When things dry out and heat up, fire follows, and this year, the American West learned that the (very) hard way. Thanks to massive lightning storms and forests full of dry kindling, thanks to years of drought, catastrophic fires swept through Oregon, Washington and California over and over, racing through iconic redwood forests and creating several of the biggest wildfires on record.

The biggest fire in California by far was the August Complex Fire that was sparked on Sept. 16 - 17 by massive lightning strikes, and it has since devoured more than 1 million acres (417,000 hectares) — and it is still burning. All but one of the top five fires in the state occured this year.

Explosive wildfires also erupted in Colorado, with all the state's top recorded fires happening in 2020.

Apocalyptic skies from coast to coast
(Image credit: CIRA)
Where there's fire, there's smoke, lots and lots of it. Nothing says "apocalypse now," like walking outside at Noon and seeing the skies as dark as night. In September, the skies across the Bay Area turned an eerie orange, thanks to a thick, choking blanket of smoke heading south from Oregon wildfires. 

These conflagrations were visible from space, with the fast-moving California Creek Fire forming a vast fire cloud and at one point, the record-breaking hurricane season collided with the record-breaking wildfire season, creating a truly disturbing image of the twin catastrophes seen from space.

Earth breaks records left and right
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Our warming planet is now breaking records for warmest, hottest and driest, so fast we can barely keep up. This September, for instance, was the hottest on record.

That's 0.05 degrees Celsius (0.09 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the previous record holder, September 2018.

Some of the hottest hots occurred in Siberia, where zombie fires were blazing, as well as South America, Australia and the Middle East.

Sadly, this isn't the only record-breaker this year; January and May were also the hottest on record. Los Angeles recorded its hottest temperature, a blazing 121 F (49.4 C), while in June, a small town in Siberia, the mercury hit 100.4 F (38 C). And sea ice was at a record low this year as well.

Massive Antarctic glacier in danger
(Image credit: Alex Mazur/British Antarctic Survey)
Antarctica was once thought to be relatively insulated from climate change. But that's changing fast.

The massive Thwaites glacier, one of the biggest on the coldest continent, is sliding into the sea, thanks to rivers of warm water that are lubricating its base.

Some of these hidden channels beneath the glacier are 800 feet (243 m) deep. 

This is bad news, because the glacier is truly gigantic; if the entire hunk of ice were to fall into the ocean, sea levels could rise a whopping 25 inches (63.5 centimeters). 

Earth is facing a form of heat not seen in 50 million years
(Image credit: Public domain.)
Earth is barreling toward a "hothouse" state that it hasn't seen for eons, a scary study in September found. 

By analyzing the chemicals in the shells of tiny sea-dwellers known as forams, which build their shells out of calcium and other elements permeating the ocean, scientists were able to recreate a record of climate on the planet going back to the Cenozoic era, when dinosaurs went extinct.

Over that time, Earth moved through Hothouse, Coolhouse, Icehouse and Warmhouse states, thanks to shifts in the planet's tilt, greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere and the size of polar ice caps.

Those long-dead sea creatures show how anomalous our current warming is, even on geologic time scales. The current warming far outpaces normal fluctuations in the planet's temperature, and could catapult us out of our current Icehouse state into a Hothouse state, the study found.

Lost penguin colony revealed by Antarctic melt
(Image credit: Steve Emslie)
Dozens of Adelie penguin mummies were recently uncovered on a dry, windy cape in southern Antarctica. This site had been used by nesting penguins at least three times over the last 5,000 years, but it was hidden and preserved beneath layers of snow.

While the northern tip of Antarctica was melting fast, Cape Irizar in southern Antarctica, flanked by the icy waters of the Ross Sea, had long been buffered from such extreme changes. But in the last decade, streamlets of meltwater have carried away snow, unveiling the bodies of those black-and-white birds.

As global heating accelerates, nesting sites for millions of penguins in northern Antarctica may disappear, but the newfound site at Cape Irizar may once again be used, Steve Emslie, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, told Live Science.

It's not too late
(Image credit: Shutterstock)
Despite the dire warnings our planet is flashing, it's still not too late to hit the brakes on warming. 

The U.S. could reach "net-zero" carbon emissions by 2050, a new report found. No single approach will work to stop our climate emissions — every single approach must be pursued to slow warming.

Among the steps that could help: Putting 50 million electric cars on the road, increasing electric heating in homes and quadrupling solar and wind energy generation.

And just slowing our greenhouse gas emissions may not be enough: Pulling carbon out of the air, through agricultural practices, forest replanting, carbon capture and even sucking carbon out of the rocks could also help reverse dangerous warming trends, experts told Live Science.

But to get there, we need to take steps immediately.

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The Climate Emergency: 2020 In Review

Scientific American  - William J. Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M. Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R. Moomaw

Despite some promising developments, the need for action has grown even more urgent

Horses panic as a wildfire approaches near Canberra, Australia in February of 2020. Credit: Getty Images
Authors
  • William J. Ripple is Distinguished Professor of Ecology at Oregon State University, Director of the Alliance of World Scientists, and lead author of the World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency.
  • Christopher Wolf is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University.
  • Thomas M. Newsome is a lecturer (academic fellow) at The University of Sydney.
  • Phoebe Barnard is Chief Science and Policy Officer at the Conservation Biology Institute and Honorary Research Associate of the African Climate and Development Initiative at the University of Cape Town.
  • William R. Moomaw is Professor Emeritus of International Environmental Policy at Tufts University and a visiting scientist and board member of the Woodwell Climate Research Center.
The climate emergency has arrived and is accelerating more rapidly than most scientists anticipated, and many of them are deeply concerned. The adverse effects of climate change are much more severe than expected, and now threaten both the biosphere and humanity.

There is mounting evidence linking increases in extreme weather frequency and intensity to climate change. 

The year 2020, one of the hottest years on record, also saw:
Every effort must be made to reduce emissions and increase removals of atmospheric carbon in order to restore the melting Arctic and end the deadly cycle of damage that the current climate is delivering.

Scientists now find that catastrophic climate change could render a significant portion of the Earth uninhabitable consequent to continued high emissions, self-reinforcing climate feedback loops and looming tipping points.

To date, 1,859 jurisdictions in 33 countries have issued climate emergency declarations covering more than 820 million people.

 In January 2020, we warned of untold human suffering in a report titled World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from 153 countries at time of publication.

As an Alliance of World Scientists, we continue to collect signatures from scientists, with now more than 13,700 signatories. In our paper, we presented graphs showing vital signs of very troubling climate change trends with little progress by humanity.

Based on these trends and scientists’ moral obligation to “clearly warn humanity of any catastrophic threat” and to “tell it like it is,” we declared a climate emergency and proposed policy suggestions.

We called for transformative change with six steps involving energy, short-lived air pollutants , nature, food, economy and population. A short video discussion by thought leaders on the six steps is now available (see below). 


World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency

Here, we investigate progress for these six steps during 2020. We have seen a few promising developments on energy, nature and food. Impressively, the European Union is on track to meet its emissions reduction goal for 2020 and become zero net carbon by 2050; however, this goal will still increase temperatures from the damaging levels of today.

We are also encouraged by the recent trend of governments committing to zero net carbon, including China by 2060 and Japan by 2050. Similar pledges have been made by the United Kingdom, many subnational governments and some corporations, although there is mounting evidence that a 2050 or later target may be inadequate and net zero carbon should be reached much earlier, for example, by 2030.

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has pledged that the U.S. will rejoin the Paris agreement and proposed a $2 trillion climate plan to phase down fossil fuels by expanding renewable energy capacity while creating jobs, reducing pollution and investing in historically disadvantaged communities.

It is critically important to significantly reduce CO2 emissions while simultaneously increasing carbon accumulation by forests, mangroves, wetlands and other ecosystems.

Progress for nature came in the form of the Bonn Challenge to restore forest and other ecosystems, but much more investment is needed in natural climate solutions.

Global meat consumption, which must be reduced for climate mitigation, is expected to decline 3 percent this year, largely as a result of COVID-19. While likely a temporary decline, this coincides with increasingly popular meat substitutes; annual U.S. sales are projected to reach $1 billion in 2020.

Although lockdowns associated with the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a decrease in CO2 emissions of 7 percent in 2020, this reduction is unlikely to be long-lived because there has been no major concurrent shift in the way we produce energy.

This drop in emissions was a tiny blip compared to the cumulative buildup of greenhouse gases, which has led to all five of the hottest years on record occurring since 2015. In fact, atmospheric concentrations of CO2 continued to rise rapidly in 2020 reaching a record high in September.

COVID-19 also led to a one year postponement of the COP26 United Nations climate change conference, after the 2019 failure of the COP25 conference to make meaningful progress.

We are concerned that no major industrialized country is on track to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, the target of the Paris Agreement.

Instead, the actions of many wealthy countries—including the U.S. —are consistent with greater than three degrees C warming. Unfortunately, progress in 2020 has also been limited in the areas of short-lived air pollutants, the economy and population.

As we move into 2021 and beyond, we need a massive-scale mobilization to address the climate crisis, including much more progress on the six steps of climate change mitigation. Key actions for each step include the following:
  1. Energy. Swiftly phasing out fossil fuels is a top priority. This can be achieved through a multipronged strategy based on rapidly transitioning to low-carbon renewables such as solar and wind power, implementing massive conservation practices, and imposing carbon fees high enough to curtail the use of fossil fuels.

  2. Short-lived pollutants. Quickly cutting emissions of methane, black carbon (soot), hydrofluorocarbons and other short-lived climate pollutants is vital. It can dramatically reduce the short-term rate of warming, which may otherwise be difficult to affect.
    Specific actions to address short-lived pollutants include reducing methane emissions from landfills and the energy sector (methane), promoting improved clean cookstoves (soot) and developing better refrigerant options and management (hydrofluorocarbons).

  3. Nature. We must restore and protect natural ecosystems such as forests, mangroves, wetlands and grasslands, allowing these ecosystems to reach their ecological potential for sequestering carbon dioxide.
    The logging of the Amazon, tropical forests in Southeast Asia, and other rainforests including the proposed cutting in the Tongass National Forest of Alaska is especially devastating to the climate.
    Creation of new protected areas, including strategic forest carbon reserves, should be a top priority. Payment for ecosystem services programs offer an equitable way for wealthier nations to help protect natural ecosystems.

  4. Food. A dietary shift toward eating more plant-based foods and consuming fewer animal products, especially beef, would significantly reduce emissions of methane and other greenhouse gases.
    It would also free up agricultural lands for growing human food and, potentially, reforestation (“Nature” step). Relevant policy actions include minimizing tillage to maximize soil carbon, cutting livestock subsidies and supporting research and development of environmentally friendly meat substitutes.
    Reducing food waste is also critical, given that at least one third of all food produced is wasted.

  5. Economy. We must transition to a carbon-free economy that reflects our dependence on the biosphere. Exploitation of ecosystems for profit absolutely must be halted for long-term sustainability.
    While this is a broad, holistic step involving ecological economics, there are specific actions that support this transition. Examples include cutting subsidies to and divesting from the fossil fuel industry.

  6. Population. The global human population, growing by more than 200,000 people per day, must be stabilized and gradually reduced using approaches that ensure social and economic justice such as supporting education for all girls and women, and increasing the availability of voluntary family planning services.
These steps synergize with each other and together ensure a sustainable future. They also have many co-benefits beyond climate mitigation. For example, stabilizing human population size can improve climate adaptation capacity in the event of declining crop yields. Similarly, plant-rich diets offer significant benefits for human health.

In December 2020, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pleaded for every nation to declare a “climate emergency.”

Thus, we call for the U.S. government to proclaim a climate emergency with either Joe Biden declaring a national climate emergency through an executive order or Congress passing major climate mitigation funding and a declaration of a climate emergency (H.Con.Res.52, S.Con.Res.22) that has been buried in a Congressional committee throughout 2020.

One year ago, we were troubled about poor progress on mitigating climate change. We are now alarmed by the failure of sufficient progress during 2020.

However, there are glimmers of hope. Young people in more than 3,500 locations continued global climate strikes calling for urgent action. The Black Lives Matter movement has brought deep social injustice and inequality to the surface of our social and economic systems.

Rapid progress in each of the six steps can be achieved when they are framed from the start in the context of climate justice, as climate change is a deeply moral issue.

But this is only possible when those who face the greatest climate risks help shape the response, including Indigenous peoples, women, youth, people of color and low-income people.

Aggressive transformative change, if framed holistically and equitably, will accelerate broad-based restorative action and avert the worst of the climate emergency.

The survival of our society as we know it depends upon this unprecedented change.

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(AU) Environmental Capitalism And Climate Change Wars: Australia In 2000

CounterPunch - Binoy Kampmark

Photograph Source: jjron – GFDL 1.2
Author
Dr Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
The Australian was convinced.

“Australia could have avoided two decades of climate change wars had the Howard government pushed ahead with its majority view of an emissions trading scheme (ETS), newly released documents reveal.” 

Historian Chris Wallace is not as unequivocal in this assertion, but nonetheless observes in The Conversation that “a working consensus among cabinet ministers” is discernible, “with one exception, that an emissions trading scheme (ETS) was not only a possible but a likely route by which Australia would eventually fulfil its international environmental obligations.”

These views came in light of the release by the Australian National Archives of the 2000 cabinet papers. Climate change sceptics are not in the ascendant; the Australian Greenhouse Office is working on a variant of the ETS, and requested funding for its operations in the May budget.

This is a far too rosy reading. The Howard government had already argued in December 1997 at Kyoto (Conference of the Parties COP3) that greenhouse gas emissions growth would be permitted to 108% of its 1990 baseline. Along with Iceland and Norway, it was one of three countries granted an increase in emission levels from its 1990 base. 

To this could be added Australia’s refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, though Prime Minister John Howard was still boastful of his environmental measures, including the creation of the Australian Greenhouse Office.

How to even meet Australia’s singularly generous targets was a source of concern among ministers. Environment minister Robert Hill’s submission in May to his colleagues drew attention to two projects – the coal-fired Kogan Creek power station in Queensland and Comalco Alumina – that would together account for 25% of emissions growth allowed by the Kyoto undertakings.

Issues of efficiency were raised: the Kogan Creek power station would only be half as efficient as a gas-fired version. Hill suggested the imposition of various conditions, one of which would be a commitment to abate the carbon arising from the projects. 

Three departments – the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Treasury and the Department of Finance – pooh-poohed the idea. In the curt response from PM&C, it was “desirable to clarify future greenhouse policies as soon as possible to reduce the uncertainty faced by investors in projects such as these.”

But there was one figure looming large, an aggressive paladin for the resource sector sceptical about the climate change narrative. Nick Minchin was the Howard government’s Industry and Resources Minister. He had big, aggressive dreams for gas. His goal: to blunt any emissions trading scheme through large compensation packages across carbon-intensive industries.

This is not to say that any ETS would not have been gravely deficient in either its philosophy or its realisation. At COP6 at The Hague, a vocal lobby for the marketing of greenhouse gases, groups seeking to corporatize the ostensible reduction of emissions through free trade environmentalism, were much in evidence. These included the International Chamber of Commerce and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. The Kyoto Protocol risked becoming a corporate friendly charter.

Australia’s less than heroic contribution at The Hague was important in ensuring that no agreement was reached between participating countries, largely due to disagreements between the US and European Union. Hill was charged with easing his country’s feather light burden of environmental responsibility further, with a brief that would seek additional carbon sinks already agreed to under the Kyoto negotiations.

The minister would “minimise the cost of implementing Kyoto and the impact on Australian trade competitiveness.” Should the spectre of disproportionate costs to Australia arise at the COP6 negotiations, Hill was to become a committed saboteur, working “with like-minded countries to block consensus or failing this, make a statement of Australia’s position”. 

Australia, as part of an Umbrella Group including Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Iceland, Norway and Iceland duly concurred with US proposals favouring the use of carbon sinks.

The fact that Minchin would not even accept a market model for emissions trading suggested an encampment, an ideology pre-heliocentric in nature. Most of the cabinet ministers in the Howard government did, on some level, accept the gravity of anthropogenic induced climate change. 

But a survey of Minchin’s opinions over the years reveals how his militant stance on climate has become the orthodoxy of Australian governments from Abbott to Morrison. Along with Abbott, he is a fan of carbon dioxide, “more of a friend than an enemy to the earth’s flora and fauna.” Climate change was a natural process of complexity requiring “prudent and cost-effective adaptation.” He remained unconvinced “about the theory of anthropogenic global warming.”

In July 2013, Minchin launched Taxing Air: Facts & Fallacies About Climate Change. Written by Bob Carter and a host of other sceptics, including Stewart Franks and Bill Kininmonth, Minchin was “flattered” at being asked to launch a book he felt should be “in every school, every university and every community library.” Carter was “a terrific and leading voice in combating the scare mongering we have all been subjected to on the theory of anthropogenic global warming.”

In 2009, Minchin was a cardinal knife wielder in the Liberal Party coup against then leader and future prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull was an ETS convert; his replacement, a certain climate change denialist Tony Abbott, was not. Abbott became prime minister in 2013 cresting on promises to dismantle carbon-pricing schemes. Australian climate change policy, flawed as it was, had been effectively, and comprehensively, jettisoned.

In 2021, Minchin’s legacy is holding firm and fast. Australia retains a near manic ambivalence to the reduction of emissions. The mining lobbies remain boisterously strong, the environmental portfolio in the Morrison cabinet, weak. 

The government’s lack of ambition has seen it keep company with Saudi Arabia and Brazil in being excluded from the latest United Nations Climate Action Summit. That trend was already set at the start of the new millennium.

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07/01/2021

These Stunning NASA Satellite Images Capture 2020's Extreme Climate Events

CNN - Amy Woodyatt

Dramatic video shows bushfire overtake firefighters 00:52 Source: CNN

As we move into the new year, it's easy to see that things changed for a lot of people in 2020.

Alongside a deadly pandemic, 2020 also delivered reminders of the severity of the climate crisis facing the world -- droughts, floods, heatwaves, wildfires and hurricanes continued to disrupt life for communities across the globe, in addition to and in spite of the challenges brought by Covid-19.

Images of some of these climate events -- visually stunning and sobering in equal measure -- have been captured by NASA's fleet of Earth-observing satellites and instruments found on the International Space Station.

Unprecedented wildfires

On this day last year, NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer captured images of thick, tan-colored smoke drifting across Southeastern Australia, taken as the country was ravaged by one of its worst wildfire seasons on record.

Fire season in Australia is always dangerous -- but conditions were unusually severe in 2020, fanning the flames and making firefighting conditions particularly difficult.

Experts say climate change has worsened the scope and impact of natural disasters like fires and floods -- weather conditions are growing more extreme, and, for years, and fires have been starting earlier in the season and spreading with greater intensity.

This natural-color image of Southeastern Australia was acquired on January 4, 2020 by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA's Aqua satellite.

2020 was also a year to remember for many residents of US West Coast states, where deadly wildfires in California, Oregon and Washington forced tens of thousands of people into shelters amid the coronavirus pandemic.

 In the image below, captured on September 9, a thick blanket of smoke can be seen along the West Coast.

"Climate and fire scientists have long anticipated that fires in the U.S. West would grow larger, more intense, and more dangerous. But even the most experienced among them have been at a loss for words in describing the scope and intensity of the fires burning in West Coast states during September 2020," NASA said.

This image shows North America on September 9, 2020, as a thick blanket of smoke covered the West Coast.

Several of this year's fires were triggered by lightning, but extreme conditions including record-breaking temperatures, dry air, fierce winds and drought caused the fires to wreak havoc on nearby forests, and, eventually, homes.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) and the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) sensors, found on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite, collected daily images of thick plumes of aerosol particles blowing throughout the US West, which, according to NASA, was on a scale that satellites and scientists rarely see.

Drought

On July 3, 2020, the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8 captured this false-color image of the river near Rosario, a key port city in Argentina.
Though this picture seems to show a lush and green oasis, the image, captured by NASA's Landsat, actually reveals the parched river basin of Argentina's Paraná River.
2020 was meant to be the year of climate action. Instead, it crowned a wasted decade


An extended period of unusually warm weather and drought in southern Brazil, Paraguay and Northern Argentina caused the river to drop to its lowest levels in decades. 

Not only has the drought contributed to an increase in fire activity in the surrounding delta and floodplain areas, but it has also affected local businesses and residents, with ships grounded and low water levels costing millions of dollars in the grain industry.

Human activity has been linked to the world's risk of drought since the start of the 20th century: Greenhouse gases generated by power plants, farming, cars, trains and human activities in general have influenced the risk of droughts, and experts predict that drought linked to climate change will worsen.

Hurricanes

Hurricane Laura, one of the 10 strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the US, swept through southwestern Louisiana in August, killing at least six and leaving a wide path of destruction it its wake.

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active on record, and many of the storms that slammed into the Gulf Coast, Central America and the Caribbean last year showed signs that they were supercharged by global warming.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NOAA-20 acquired this image of Hurricane Laura at 2:20 a.m. Central Daylight Time on August 26, 2020.
In the image above, captured by the VIIRS on the NOAA-20 satellite, the storm looms off the US coastline, highlighted by the darkness of night, while clouds are shown in infrared using brightness temperature data, and overlaid onto imagery showing city lights. 

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7 Graphics That Show Why The Arctic Is In Trouble

Gizmodo - Jody Serrano

A lake of meltwater forms on the Greenland ice sheet near Sermeq Avangnardleq Glacier. (Photo: Sean Gallup, Getty Images)
It’s no secret that the Arctic is in trouble. And while the worrying state of the ice in the region has made numerous headlines this year, they’re just the latest twists and turns in a long-term trend.

One of the best gauges for putting what’s happening in the region into perspective is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Report Card, a compilation of environmental observations and analyses that the agency has been producing annually for 15 years.

It was released earlier this month, providing an in-depth look at the Arctic’s struggles as the climate crisis reshapes the region. But if you’re more of a visual person, NOAA made these neat — although worrying — graphics to help get a handle on what’s happened this past year and how it fits into the bigger picture.

Join us as we take a dive into a series of graphics that highlight key findings of the Arctic Report Card, and explain why you should care about what happens up there.

►Ice on Land Continues to Dwindle

The Greenland ice sheet lost mass again in 2020, but not as much as it did 2019. Adapted from the 2020 Arctic Report Card, this graph tracks Greenland mass loss measured by NASA's GRACE satellite missions since 2002. (Graphic: NOAA)
If the ice that blankets Greenland completely melts away, global sea levels would rise by 24 feet (7 meters).

While it won’t all disappear overnight or even in the next few decades, recent trends paint a very worrying picture. Since 2002, the Greenland ice sheet has lost roughly 268 billion metric tons of ice per year on average.

 The annual record for ice loss occurred in 2019, which saw 532 billion metric tons vanish due to a staggering heat wave and bizarrely sunny skies. The loss raised ocean levels by 0.01 inches (1.5 millimetres), per the Arctic Report Card.

That seemingly small rise is both a reminder that the sea level has risen roughly a foot (30 centimeters) since the start of the Industrial Revolution and a harbinger of what’s to come. The rate of rise is on track to quicken this century as the ice on Greenland, along with glaciers elsewhere, and the massive Antarctic ice sheet continue to melt.

Sea level rise is already harming coastal infrastructure, and the impacts will worsen in the future. But the melting ice sheet isn’t the only warning sign of what’s happening as temperatures rise in the Arctic.

►The Arctic Is Losing a Startling Amount of Sea Ice in the Summer
Arctic sea ice concentration on September 15, 2020 — the day of the smallest extent of the year — compared to the median extent (gold line) reached on this date in Septembers from 1981 to 2010. (Graphic: NOAA)
Though it doesn’t contribute to sea level rise since it’s already floating, Arctic sea ice is yet another indicator of the massive changes afoot.

This year’s sea ice cover reached its second-smallest summer minimum on record, clocking in at just 1.44 million square miles (3.74 million square kilometers). The lowest ever minimum extent to date during the satellite era, or 1.32 million square miles (3.41 million kilometers), was recorded in 2012.

But this year’s annual summer minimum is just one startling aspect of a problem that goes back decades and is in fact more impactful if you look at it with a wider lens.

The graphic above highlights the dramatic reduction of sea ice extent in just a few years. The gold line is the median ice extent for 1981-2010, in which half of the years had smaller extents and half had larger.

Meanwhile, the light blue to white area represents the sea ice concentration on Sept. 15 of this year, the day of the summer minimum extent.

According to the Arctic Report Card, the downward trend for the summer minimum in 2020 is 13.1% per decade relative to the 1981-2010 average.

►In Fact, It Has Lost an Area of Summer Sea Ice Larger Than 40 Maines
A graph of daily ice extent since 2005. Years 2005-2009 are light purple, the record-low year 2012 is salmon, other years for 2010-2014 are light green, and years 2015-2019 are blue. The 2020 daily extent line is in black. (Graphic: NOAA)
Another way to analyse Arctic ice is to think about the state of Maine. Yes, you read that right. As you can see in the graph above, the downward trend for the summer minimum extent is clear.

The 13.1% dip per decade relative to the 1981–2010 average tells some of the story. Each year that averages out to about 32,000 square miles (82,700 square kilometres) of ice lost. That’s roughly the size of Maine. So over the past four decades of satellite records, we’ve lost 40 Maines-worth of ice.

You can also divide the satellite sea ice record into thirds, which still shows that the average minimum extent for each third has been successively declining, with an especially dramatic dip from 2007-2020.

From 1979-1992, the average minimum extent was 2.64 million square miles (6.85 million square kilometres); for 1993-2006, it was 2.37 million square miles (6.13 million square kilometres); and for 2007-2020, it was 1.71 million square miles (4.44 million square kilometres).

Though the rate of loss has slowed over the past 14 years, the Report Card notes this “reflects a changed Arctic with consistently low extent throughout the period;” the 14 lowest extents in the satellite era have all occurred in the last 14 years.

►The Ice That Remains Is Younger
The age of sea ice in the Arctic at winter maximum in 2000 (left, week of March 18) and 2020 (right, week of March 21). (Graphic: NOAA)
It’s not just the extent of the sea ice that has changed, it’s also the character. Arctic sea ice has gotten dramatically younger. As NOAA explains, when it comes to ice, age refers to thickness and durability. Young ice is thinner and more likely to melt in the summer.

Older ice — which is typically four years or older — is ice that survives year-round and keeps thickening over time. Per the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, old ice can grow to be between six and 25-feet (1.8 to 7.6 meters) thick.

As you can see in the graphic, older ice in the Arctic is a sliver of what it once was. In 1985, 33% of ice in the Arctic was very old ice; in March 2020, only 4.4% of the sea ice was old.

According to NOAA, 20 to 30 years ago, the sea ice on the Arctic was dominated by old sea ice. As time went by though, old ice drifted out of the Arctic through the Fram Strait where it melted in the relatively warmer waters of the Atlantic.

This wasn’t a problem then, as new batches of old ice were created in the Beaufort Gyre, which NOAA describes a “nursery” for young ice to grow thicker and stronger as it drifts around for many years. Today, summers in the southern branch of the Beaufort Gyre are often too warm for ice to survive, the agency said.

To use a phrase from the NSIDC, this “Benjamin Button ice” is an element in dangerous cycle, one in which increasing air and ocean temperatures more easily destroy first-year ice and weaken older ice.

If this cycle continues and older ice disappears from the Arctic Ocean, the world may see ice-free summers in the Arctic as early as 2030.

►The Northern High Latitudes Are More Flammable
Rising surface temperatures have made fire fuels in Northern Hemisphere high latitudes more flammable over the past 41 years. This map shows the June trend (1979–2019) in the build-up index. Brown indicates increasing flammability; purple indicates decreasing flammability. (Graphic: NOAA)
We not only have the melting ice to worry about. We also have to stress about the opposite: fire.

According to the Arctic Report Card, rising surface temperatures in Northern Hemisphere high latitudes have made fire fuels — organic matter on the ground or above the surface such as trees and peat that will ignite and burn — more flammable over the past 41 years.

You can see this clearly in the graphic above, which shows the buildup index trend in June from 1979-2019. Brown indicates increasing flammability, while purple indicates decreasing flammability.

The buildup index is an element of the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System. It consists of a numerical rating of fuel available to catch fire and considers surface temperature, relative humidity, and 24-hour rainfall totals.

When the buildup index reaches certain levels, fires can burn more aggressively and intensely. The graphic indicates that the widespread increase in the buildup index in June at higher latitudes in both North America and Asia reflects that conditions are becoming more favourable for fire growth.

Trends in the availability of dry, flammable fuels for wildfire growth are consistent with what we’ve seen on the ground in recent years as well as projections for the next century.

Multiple climate scenarios project that there could be up to a fourfold increase in burned area across the higher northern latitude ecosystem by 2100.

►The Oceans Are Hot, Too
Sea surface temperature trends in the Arctic from 1982–2020, showing where waters are warming (red and orange) and where they are cooling (blue). The grey line shows the median August sea ice extent, and the white areas show the ice extent in August 2020. (Graphic: NOAA)
Considering all of the red and orange, you can probably guess what the graphic above reflects: rising sea surface temperatures in the Arctic in August, which is the peak of summer warmth.

The red and orange areas indicate where waters are warming, while the blue areas show where they are cooling. The white areas, meanwhile, reflect 2020’s sea ice extent, a dramatic reduction compared to the median ice extent from 1981 to 2010, shown by the grey line.

According to Arctic Report Card, basin-wide sea surface temperatures across the Arctic Ocean have been warming by 0.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.3 degrees Celsius) per decade.

The situation is more drastic in many of the Arctic’s coastal areas, where August temperatures have been rising by as much as 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) per decade.

The Chukchi Sea to the northwest of Alaska stands out for its especially strong warming as do parts of Hudson Bay. One notable exception, however, is the northern Barents Sea, which has experienced a cooling trend.

Ocean warming in the Arctic creates all sorts of problems for the region. More heats leads to less sea ice, which in turn leads to more sunlight being absorbed by the ocean, which consequently causes more ocean warming.

Warmer oceans also delay fall freeze-up, affecting Indigenous peoples’ hunting and fishing activities while also making coastal areas more vulnerable to damaging waves during storms. It also reduces the amount of carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs from the atmosphere.

►What Happens When You Lose Sea Ice
(left) Sea ice concentration in July 2020 compared to the 2003–2019 average. Red areas had up to 100% less than their average sea ice, while blue regions had up to 100% more ice than average.
(right) Chlorophyll amounts — an indicator of ocean plant productivity — in July 2020 as a per cent of the 2003–2019 average.
(Graphic: NOAA)
The loss of summer sea ice has increased the productivity of microscopic ocean plants in seven of the nine regions analysed by experts (the Sea of Okhotsk and Bering Sea showed lower than average values, although both still showed a positive increase over the 2003-2020 period).

These include single-celled algae that live in sea ice, known as ice algae, and in the water column, which are phytoplankton. These algae are the base of the Arctic food chain and they rely on sunlight to survive.

Scientists measure the activity of these plants by using satellite-based observations of chlorophyll, the photosynthetic green pigment phytoplankton use to capture sunlight and then turn it into chemical energy, as a proxy for phytoplankton productivity.

The graphic above from shows the connection between sea ice concentration and chlorophyll concentration. The key to understanding it is the following: Below-average sea ice generally correlates with above-average chlorophyll.

Scientists have found that the early retreat of sea ice generally drives up primary productivity, the rate at which marine algae dissolve inorganic carbon into organic material, because it opens up the oceans to sunlight sooner.

But more plants might not necessarily be a good thing. Changes that are helpful for one species can be harmful to others.

Research suggests, for example, that the increase in plant production has contributed to an increase in the bowhead whale population in the Pacific Arctic.

At the same time, however, algae species that produce deadly neurotoxins are spreading poleward, per the Arctic Report Card.

The defining message of the Arctic Report Card is that what once was is no more.

If we don’t drawdown emissions, those changes could occur even faster and put even more pressure on the ecosystems and people who call the fragile region home.

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