Our Planet’s Temperature Just Reached a Terrifying Milestone

Slate - Eric Holthaus

NASA has confirmed that our planet's temperature surged in February 2016—past a major milestone. NASA

March 12, 2016: Data released Saturday from NASA confim that February 2016 was not only the warmest month ever measured globally, at 1.35 degrees Celsius above the long-term average—it was more than 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the previously most unusually warm month ever measured: January 2016. The new NASA data confirms unofficial data released earlier this month showing a dramatic and ongoing surge in the planet's temperature—if anything, that data, upon which the previous versions of this post were based, were an underestimate. On Twitter, Gavin Schmidt, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which maintains the NASA temperature database, noted that February's temperature record was "special" and commented simply: "Wow." NASA's global temperature data is measured from a 1951-1980 baseline, about 0.3 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels. That means February 2016 was the first month in history that global average temperatures passed the 1.5 degree Celsius mark. Also, since last month's warmth was concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere (2.76 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1951-1980 baseline) and the Arctic (5.36 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1951-1980 baseline), these regions of our planet were also record warm, likely the warmest they've been for at least thousands of years. As I said in the previous version of this post—even though this surge of warmth is likely only temporary, it is a major milestone moment for humanity and our relationship to our planet.

A daily analysis of global temperatures shows the Northern Hemisphere likely exceeded 2 degrees Celsius above "normal" around March 1, 2016, when measuring from pre-industrial levels.* Ryan Maue/Weatherbell Analytics

March 3, 2016: Since this post was originally published, the heat wave has continued. As of Thursday morning, it appears that average temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere have breached the 2 degrees Celsius above "normal" mark for the first time in recorded history, and likely the first time since human civilization began thousands of years ago.* That mark has long been held (somewhat arbitrarily) as the point above which climate change may begin to become "dangerous" to humanity. It's now arrived—though very briefly—much more quickly than anticipated. This is a milestone moment for our species. Climate change deserves our greatest possible attention.

Global temperatures hit a new all-time record high in February, shattering the old record set just last month amid a record-strong El Niño. Ryan Maue/Weatherbell Analytics

March 1, 2016: Our planet's preliminary February temperature data are in, and it's now abundantly clear: Global warming is going into overdrive. There are dozens of global temperature datasets, and usually I (and my climate journalist colleagues) wait until the official ones are released about the middle of the following month to announce a record-warm month at the global level. But this month's data is so extraordinary that there's no need to wait: February obliterated the all-time global temperature record set just last month.
Using unofficial data and adjusting for different base-line temperatures, it appears that February 2016 was likely somewhere between 1.15 and 1.4 degrees warmer than the long-term average, and about 0.2 degrees above last month—good enough for the most above-average month ever measured. (Since the globe had already warmed by about +0.45 degrees above pre-industrial levels during the 1981-2010 base-line meteorologists commonly use, that amount has been added to the data released today.)
Keep in mind that it took from the dawn of the industrial age until last October to reach the first 1.0 degree Celsius, and we've come as much as an extra 0.4 degrees further in just the last five months. Even accounting for the margin of error associated with these preliminary datasets, that means it's virtually certain that February handily beat the record set just last month for the most anomalously warm month ever recorded. That's stunning.
It also means that for many parts of the planet, there basically wasn't a winter. Parts of the Arctic were more than 16 degrees Celsius (29 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than "normal" for the month of February, bringing them a few degrees above freezing, on par with typical June levels, in what is typically the coldest month of the year. In the United States, the winter was record-warm in cities coast to coast. In Europe and Asia, dozens of countries set or tied their all-time temperature records for February. In the tropics, the record-warmth is prolonging the longest-lasting coral bleaching episode ever seen.
The northernmost permanent settlement, Norway's Svalbard archipelago, has averaged 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal this winter, with temperatures rising above the freezing mark on nearly two dozen days since Dec. 1. That kind of extremely unusual weather has prompted a record-setting low maximum in Arctic sea ice, especially in the Barents Sea area north of Europe.
The data for February is so overwhelming that even prominent climate change skeptics have already embraced the new record. Writing on his blog, former NASA scientist Roy Spencer said that according to satellite records—the dataset of choice by climate skeptics for a variety of reasons—February 2016 featured "whopping" temperature anomalies especially in the Arctic. Spurred by disbelief, Spencer also checked his data with others released today and said the overlap is "about as good as it gets." Speaking with the Washington Post, Spencer said the February data proves "there has been warming. The question is how much warming there's been."
Of course, all this is happening in the context of a record-setting El Niño, which tends to boost global temperatures for as much as six or eight months beyond its wintertime peak—mainly because it takes that long for excess heat to filter its way across the planet from the tropical Pacific Ocean. But El Niño isn't entirely responsible for the absurd numbers we're seeing. El Niño's influence on the Arctic still isn't well-known and is likely small. In fact, El Niño's influence on global temperatures as a whole is likely small—on the order of 0.1 degree Celsius or so.
So what's actually happening now is the liberation of nearly two decades' worth of global warming energy that's been stored in the oceans since the last major El Niño in 1998.
Numbers like this amount to a step-change in our planet's climate system. Peter Gleick, a climate scientist at the Pacific Institute in Oakland, California, said it's difficult to compare the current temperature spike: "The old assumptions about what was normal are being tossed out the window … The old normal is gone."
Almost overnight, the world has moved within arm's reach of the climate goals negotiated just last December in Paris. There, small island nations on the front line of climate change set a temperature target of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius rise by the year 2100 as a line in the sand, and that limit was embraced by the global community of nations. On this pace, we may reach that level for the first time—though briefly—later this year. In fact, at the daily level, we're probably already there. We could now be right in the heart of a decade or more surge in global warming that could kick off a series of tipping points with far-reaching implications on our species and the countless others we share the planet with.

Climate Chief Expects 80-100 Signatures on Landmark Treaty

New York Times - Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS — The official in charge of global climate negotiations says between 80 and 100 countries are expected to sign the landmark agreement to tackle climate change reached in Paris in December at a ceremony at U.N. headquarters on April 22.

Segolene Royal, French environment minister and newly-appointed president of U.N.-led climate negotiations, said Friday that more than 30 heads of state and government have already said they will attend signing event. She said invitations signed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, French President Francois Hollande, and herself are also being sent again to all world leaders.

"I will, of course, work very hard so that we get these 80 to 100," Royal told reporters after meeting Ban. "We might have more which would be fantastic."

Royal said every country has developed a plan to fight climate change and on April 22 they will be explaining what they have done so far.

The Paris Agreement must be ratified by at least 55 countries representing at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions to enter into force.

It sets a collective goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial times, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

The pact requires all countries to submit plans for climate action and to update them every five years, though such plans are not legally binding.

Royal said the signing ceremony is one of a series of events designed to keep up the momentum created in Paris when the agreement was reached.

U.S. President Barack Obama was a key figure, along with China's president, in spurring support for the climate deal.

Royal sidestepped a question asking whether she was concerned that the United States might pull out of the agreement if one of the Republicans who oppose the accord makes it to the White House.

She said support from the Obama administration and U.S. involvement has been very important.

Greenhouse Gas 'Bookkeeping' Turned On Its Head

ScienceDaily

For the first time scientists have looked at the net balance of the three major greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide -- for every region of Earth's landmasses. They found surprisingly, that human-induced emissions of methane and nitrous oxide from ecosystems overwhelmingly surpass the ability of the land to soak up carbon dioxide emissions, which makes the terrestrial biosphere a contributor to climate change.

"Typically we think of land as a net 'sink' of carbon dioxide. But we found that the sign of the human-induced impact is reversed if we also take into account methane and nitrous oxide," one of the authors remarked. Credit: © vvoe / Fotolia

For the first time scientists have looked at the net balance of the three major greenhouse gases--carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide--for every region of Earth's landmasses.
They found surprisingly, that human-induced emissions of methane and nitrous oxide from ecosystems overwhelmingly surpass the ability of the land to soak up carbon dioxide emissions, which makes the terrestrial biosphere a contributor to climate change.
The results published in the March 10, 2016, Nature, revises our understanding of how human activity contributes to global warming.
 Co-author Anna Michalak of Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology remarked, "Typically we think of land as a net 'sink' of carbon dioxide. But we found that the sign of the human-induced impact is reversed if we also take into account methane and nitrous oxide."
The scientists looked at the so-called biogenic fluxes or flow of the three greenhouse gases on land that were caused by human activities over the last three decades and subtracted out emissions that existed "naturally" during pre-industrial times.
Biogenic sources include gas emissions from plants, animals, microbes, and the like. They were interested in finding out how human activities have changed the biogenic fluxes of these gases. Historically, such emissions have included methane emissions from wetlands and nitrous oxide emissions from soil.
 Human activity and human-caused climate change have changed the magnitude of these fluxes, however, as well as added new categories of biogenic fluxes such as those resulting from sewage, cattle, and fertilizer use.
The scientists first added up all biogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, then subtracted out those that occurred naturally prior to human intervention to get to the net amount. The study did not include non-biogenic gas emissions from activities like fossil fuel burning or natural gas production.
The team discovered that the human impact on biogenic methane and nitrous oxide emissions far outweighed the human impact on the terrestrial uptake of carbon dioxide, meaning that humans have caused the terrestrial biosphere to further contribute to warming.
In other words, the terrestrial biosphere, through human action, is now contributing to climate change rather than mitigating climate change.
 This runs counter to conventional thinking based on previous studies, which had focused only on carbon dioxide and had emphasized the climate change mitigating effect of human impacts terrestrial carbon uptake.
The scientists found that greenhouse gas emissions vary considerably by region. Interestingly, the human-induced emissions of the gases in Southern Asia, including China and India, had a larger net warming effect compared to other areas.
Southern Asia contains some 90% of the world's rice fields and more than 60% of the world's nitrogen fertilizer use. Thus, methane emissions in this region are largely from rice cultivation and livestock, while human-made fertilizers are a major source of nitrous oxide.
Lead author of the study, Hanqin Tain director of the International Center for Climate and Global Change Research, School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences at Auburn University said, "This finding reveals for the first time that human activities have transformed the land biosphere to a contributor to climate change."
"This study should serve as a wake-up call to governments, policymakers, and individuals around the world," said Michalak. "We must expand our focus and devise strategies that target the biogenic emissions of these other greenhouse gases if we are to change the course of climate change."

Grim Prospects: The Shake-Up Of Australia's Climate Science

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The fate of the 'sentinel of the southern hemisphere' is a pointer to how Australia's climate research will fare in a funding world that has lately turned more hostile.

Cape Grim: The future of climate science in Australia hangs in the balance. Photo: John Woudstra

Forty years ago next month Paul Fraser and three other CSIRO scientists towed a hardy NASA-built caravan chock with sensitive detecting equipment to Cape Grim on the pristine windswept tip of north-west Tasmania.
The make-shift facility quickly made its mark, detecting ozone-depleting chemicals in the atmosphere as they blew past in the stiff Roaring Forties. Over the decades since, the site also tracked the relentless rise of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide.
Researchers shed the caravan in 1981, replacing it with more permanent structures. The site is now "the sentinel of the southern hemisphere" and one of the top three in the world, says Mary Voice, president of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

Cape Grim in the early days: men in a van. Photo: CSIRO

If the gas collection and analysis were to cease, the emergence of new, ozone-eating or other harmful chemicals "might be missed" – let alone the tracking of gases that are heating up the planet, she says.
That Cape Grim's fate – and much of Australia's climate research – hangs in the balance surprises many just months after the country signed up to a global effort in Paris to limit global warming to 1.5-2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.

It also comes amid a record-breaking heat wave acoss south-eastern Australia and international reports that January and February smashed global heat records for those months.

Stocking 40 years of gas samples from Cape Grim, at CSIRO's Aspendale centre. Photo: Supplied

The wrangling has been prompted by CSIRO's decision five weeks ago to cull as many as 100 scientists from its Oceans & Atmosphere division as part of 350 job cuts.
"Australia turns it back on climate science," was the New York Times editors' take a week ago.
CSIRO wants to steer resources to limiting and adapting to climate change, while cutting staff involved in monitoring and modelling by half.

CSIRO's GASLab at Aspendale, on Melbourne's sandbelt. Photo: Supplied

CSIRO says the university sector could take up the slack, but their funding is typically short-term. For instance, the seven-year funds for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science - which takes in five universities including UNSW and Monash - run out at the end of 2017.
While CSIRO chiefs have pledged to spare Cape Grim, Fraser said in a submission to a Senate committee examining the cuts that the modelling and measuring capabilities of gases would "be unable survive the proposed 50-100 per cent" cuts.
Relations with 25 leading global research institutions were also at risk if the Tasmanian site and its supporting CSIRO labs in Aspendale on Melbourne's south-east were to go. Under threat include "the world's most important archive" of background atmosphere, and one of CSIRO's most-decorated research teams, Fraser – now an honorary CSIRO fellow – wrote.
CSIRO's climate funds were already facing a squeeze. The Australian Climate Change Science Program, axed by the Abbott government, was worth $5 million to CSIRO and $2.5 million a year to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Its replacement program, due to kick in from July, delivers an annual $3 million and $1.2 million, respectively, with $800,000 earmarked to universities. 
CSIRO has already slashed its contribution this year to Cape Grim by four-fifths to $230,000 after months of bickering with its bureau partners over contracts.
Sources tell Fairfax Media the two agencies are now discussing the transfer of key CSIRO modelling staff and some of the Cape Grim-related roles to the bureau. Questions remain over whether funding will accompany the scientists – and how many will be retained.
Alarmed by the potential disintegration of Australia's climate research talent, leading scientists have been brainstorming more radical alternatives. One is the creation of a new standalone national research institute to provide long-term funding for climate prediction.
CSIRO, itself, doesn't rule out supporting such a centre, which might take the form of the UK Met Office's Hadley Centre.
"This is an option CSIRO is working through with various parties, both internal and external, to ensure important climate research and modelling is continuing and to maintain strong linkages to the adaptation and mitigation work that CSIRO wants to increase its focus on in future," a spokesman said.
The bureau's official line is that it "is one of a number of parties with an interest in climate science and we are engaging positively to support Australia's climate science capability".
One senior bureau scientist, though, is wary about his agency becoming the main home for climate research. "If it lives in BoM, the knives will come out again for the bureau," the scientist says, referring to attacks during the Abbott government.
While a long-shot, creating a separate centre and basing it in Hobart – home to Australia's antarctic science and support operations – could be a shrewd political move, the scientist says.
A senior government official agrees the creation of a new centre is unlikely at this point, with efforts concentrated instead on a smooth transition of resources to the bureau.
Fraser frets, though, about carving out CSIRO's climate units. Remaining related work, such as aerosols and reactive gas monitoring, "would end up with sub-critical mass and be very vulnerable" to future cuts, he tells Fairfax Media.
On the other hand, public-good science – which is of value even if customers aren't readily available – has been a dwindling proportion of CSIRO's work for years.
"Perhaps the only way out is to completely divest CSIRO [of the climate work] and give it to someone else," he says.

Links

• Scorching start to autumn smashed national heat records, Bureau of Meteorology says
• Global temperatures could rise 1.5 degrees by 2020, researchers say
• Scientists trace human influence on extreme weather events back to 1937
• Arachnopolis Now: 'Perfect conditions' prompt a boom in Sydney redbacks, huntsmen and golden orbs

African Diet, Jobs Will Be Hit Hard by Climate Change

National Geographic - Tracie McMillan*

African farmers will lose much of their crops to global warming in the coming decades. Photograph by James L. Stanfield, NG Creative

Corn, beans and bananas could start to disappear from sub-Saharan Africa—where those crops are among the most important for local consumption—by century's end. The culprit? Climate change.
A new study of staple crops in that region, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, predicts that by 2025, 30 percent of land in the region currently cultivated for bananas, primarily in West Africa, will become unsuitable for the crop, say researchers with the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research. Bananas are significant for local consumption, say researchers.
Meanwhile, 60 percent of bean agriculture will cease to be productive by 2050, as will 41 percent of land currently dedicated to maize, the study says. Those crops are incredibly dominant in the sub-Saharan diet, featured in dishes ranging from githeri, a flavorful corn and bean stew, to ugali, a mush made of cornmeal and water.
Five other prominent crops—millet, sorghum, cassava, groundnut and yams—are expected to maintain production levels through 2100. Crops grown primarily for export, such as coffee, cocoa, and tea, were not studied.
The research marks the first quantification of crop "transformation"—planning for the inevitable decline of certain crops—in Africa, said lead researcher Julian Ramirez-Villegas, a research fellow at the University of Leeds. In addition to projecting crop viability through the century, researchers also describe a three three-stage process for managing the shift.
The research has serious implications for sub-Saharan Africa, said Ramirez-Villegas. Agriculture contributes nearly two-thirds of all employment in that region and food insecurity rates there are already the highest in the world. "It's kind of a combination of a lot of different vulnerabilities coalescing at the same time," said Ramirez-Villegas. "And, at the same time, agriculture is a key sector for africanAfrican livelihoods."
As those crops fail, farmers will need to adjust, either switching crops or, in extreme cases, give up agriculture altogether. And if crop outputs diminish, that could pressure sub-Saharan Africa, already a net importer of food, to rely even more on other countries to stay fed.
Much of the land being threatened by climate change will need to be "transitioned," said Ramirez-Villegas, and put to other use. While maize, which only became a staple in Africa over the last century, may no longer be as viable, it could be replaced with millet and sorghum, which are native to Africa (and tolerant of heat and drought), and would likely thrive. The other alternative, say researchers, could be swapping crop agriculture for another kind of farming, such as livestock. Kenyan farmers, for example, began exploring camel husbandry as a replacement for cattle—or leaving farming altogether.
Those changes would have a direct impact on the food security and diet of residents in sub-Saharan Africa. With the exception of bananas, the crops in the study are all grown primarily for domestic consumption.
"Most of the production [studied here] is consumed locally and sold in local markets, or produced for subsistence," said Villegas-Ramirez. "But African countries are also importing significant amounts of food."
Researchers plan to expand their research to explore additional substitute crops, said Villegas-Ramirez, as well as project the direct impact of changes in agriculture on the diet available to residents.

*Tracie McMillan is an independent journalist covering food and equity. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The American Way of Eating, and is a senior fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.

Links

• In a Warmer World, There May Be Fewer Fruits and Vegetables

The More We Learn About Antarctica’s Past, The Scarier The Present Looks

Washington Post - Chris Mooney

A zodiac carrying a team of international scientists heads to Chile's station Bernardo O'Higgins in Antarctica in January 2015. (Natacha Pisarenko/AP)

For the second time in a month, leading scientists have closely tied the ancient history of the vast Antarctic ice sheet to a key planetary parameter that humans are now controlling — the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Last month, new research showed that during the Miocene era, some 14 to 23 million years ago, Antarctica gave up huge volumes of ice, equivalent to tens of meters of sea level rise, when levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are thought to have been around 500 parts per million. We're at a little over 400 parts per million now.
And now, new research in the journal Science goes back even farther, to the ancient era when the ice sheet's growth is believed to have originally begun, some 34 million years ago during a time period known as the Eocene-Oligocene boundary. And it finds that at this time, too, a fall in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels appears to have been involved in allowing glaciation and ice sheet growth.
"Before 33.6 million years ago, there was no ice, and CO2 was above 750, was above the threshold," said Simone Galeotti, lead author of the new study by a large international collaboration of authors, and a researcher at the Università degli Studi di Urbino in Italy. But then came a transitional period with lower carbon dioxide and a variable ice sheet — and then, 32.8 million years ago, carbon dioxide levels dipped below 600 parts per million, and the Antarctic ice sheet greatly expanded.
The research is based on a nearly kilometer-long core of deep ocean sediment taken from the western part of the Ross Sea, not far from the United States' McMurdo station. The distribution of key bits of rock in different layers of the core, said Galeotti, suggests that it wasn't until 32.8 million years ago, emerging from the warmth of the period known as the Eocene, that icebergs were breaking off of an ice sheet that stretched all the way to the Antarctic coast. These icebergs floated out into the sea and melted, and rocks or "clasts" carried in the ice fell to the sea floor, leaving clues that modern geologists can read.
"We see ice-rafted clasts reaching the drilling site only at 32.8 million years. Which says that before that time, the ice sheet was not fully developed," Galeotti said.
Before this period, in the Eocene climate — typically referred to as a "hothouse" world and occurring between 55.8 million and about 34 million years ago — Antarctica actually featured trees and vegetation. The Arctic was also extremely warm back then — alligators swam there.
The planet at the time did not have land-based ice and was far hotter than now, with much higher seas overall and much higher carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. This changed in the transition from the Eocene to the Oligocene, which ushered in a cooling that closely tracked declining levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — although it was also buffeted, over long time periods, by tweaks and changes to the Earth's orbit.
"This is one of the biggest climate changes that the planet has seen in the last 50 million years, when Antarctica went from being forested and vegetated, to really … it became glaciated at this Eocene-Oligocene boundary," said Rob DeConto, one of the study's co-authors and a geoscientist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
In this context, the new research further tunes our understanding of how much carbon dioxide allows the ice sheet to grow or causes it to melt. "The ice sheet was particularly vulnerable between 33.6 and 32.8 million years ago, with the CO2 level between 750 and 600," Galeotti said.
That might still sound pretty far off from where we are now, but here's the catch. When the Antarctic ice sheet initially formed, scientists don't believe that it had one of its most distinctive current features — large portions, particularly in West Antarctica but also in key regions of East Antarctica, where ice is grounded deep below sea level.
That's because after the ice sheet formed, its huge and crushing weight deformed the land surface beneath it over time, allowing these particular areas to become submerged. And these regions, where ice is not on land but rather lies on a foundation deep beneath the sea, are expected to be vulnerable well before 600 parts per million of carbon dioxide levels are reached, Galeotti said.
"The part of the ice sheet now sitting below sea level is making this ice sheet even more vulnerable than the Eocene-Oligocene boundary ice sheet, because there are different mechanisms for melting," said Galeotti. Specifically, warm ocean water, or ocean currents, now have access to the ice sheet, which was not the case when it was fully on land.
Such differences between now and 34 million years ago, however, also signal a major caveat when drawing inferences linking Antarctica's ancient past to the present. After all, other processes than those associated with carbon dioxide may have further enhanced the growth of the Antarctic ice sheet back then — processes that are either no longer operative today or not really relevant because of the speed at which we are now changing the planet.

The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research shows what would happen if glaciers in West Antarctica melted. (Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research)

For instance, in an accompanying commentary in Science, Carolyn Lear of Cardiff University and Dan Lunt of the University of Bristol note that there have long been arguments that the tectonic widening of the Drake Passage, between South America and Antarctica, was involved in the original development of the Antarctic ice sheet, by allowing the continent to become more isolated. They now argue that this widening, by enabling the Antarctic circumpolar current and better connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific, may have also acted to help bury carbon dioxide in the ocean — which, in turn, would have simultaneously enhanced ice sheet growth.
We may be driving planetary carbon dioxide levels right now, but plate-tectonics is another matter — so there are clearly aspects of this story from the past that are not as relevant to the present.
And there's another caveat — studies of how the ice sheet changed over millions of years may or may not be relevant to the timescales that today's humans care about. What we really want to know is whether Antarctica is going to give up a major amount of ice in the next 100 years or  more. You can't directly answer that question based on the new study.
Still, the research suggests that the Antarctic ice sheet can do things that our computer simulations, alone, may not capture, said Thomas Wagner, program scientist for the cryosphere at NASA, who is familiar with the new study.
"We run all these ice sheet models for things like the IPCC report and sea level rise projections. And they're great, they represent an amazing integration of mathematics, cutting edge computing, and integration of disparate fields like ice physics and oceanography," Wagner said.
"But we also know from the geologic record that the big ice sheets undergo major, rapid changes from time to time that are difficult to capture in our models but can cause sea levels to rise very rapidly — as in more than five feet in 100 years. Results like this one — connecting Antarctica to atmospheric CO2 levels not far off from where we are now — are important because they tell us what the ice wants to do. It helps guide future modeling, gives us a new way to frame our current studies, and provides bounds for hazard assessment for sea level," he said.
As is often the case with major Antarctic research, the new study is also an example of international collaboration. The scientists involved are from Italy, the United States, New Zealand, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The ideas were hatched when the researchers came together for a summer program in paleoclimatology at Urbino in Italy, said Galeotti.
The bottom line, said DeConto, is that the new research is "just adding to the mountain of evidence that, when greenhouse gas concentrations were high in the past, climate was warmer, there was less ice" in Antarctica.  "And even in times when there were ice sheets when CO2 was higher than today, those ice sheets were variable; they grew and shrank."
The more we come to understand Antarctica's history, the more this continent, whose ice sheet is too big to even wrap our minds around, becomes relevant to our present.

Links

• This mind-boggling study shows just how massive sea level rise really is
• Antarctica could be much more vulnerable to melting than we thought
• Scientists confirm their fears about West Antarctica — that it's inherently unstable
• Scientists confirm that East Antarctica's biggest glacier is melting from below
• It's official: We can now say global warming made some weather events worse
• Next up from climate change: More polar bears on land, potentially running into humans
• Before his tragic death, nature photographer shot iconic images of climate change's threat
• China vowed to peak emissions by 2030. It could be way ahead of schedule
• What the Clinton-Sanders divide on fracking says about our energy future

CSIRO Climate Cuts 'A Catastrophic Failure Of Public Policy', Senate Told

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

US and Australian climate research experts say staff cuts will make it hard for Australia to achieve best policy results in international negotiations

The Senate committee was told the staff cuts at the CSIRO would be wasting millions of dollars of investment in expertise. Photograph: Alan Porritt/AAP

Cuts to climate research at Australia's science agency, CSIRO, are a "catastrophic failure of public policy" that will damage the UN's climate change work and will hinder Australia's ability to represent its self-interest at international climate change negotiations, the Australian Senate has heard.
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change produces the world's most authoritative statements on the nature of climate change, its impacts, and how to adapt to and mitigate it. To do that, it combines a suite of climate models.
That process would be hampered by the CSIRO's recent decision to shift resources away from climate modelling and monitoring, Karl Taylor, of the program for climate model diagnosis and intercomparison at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the US, told a Senate committee hearing on Friday.
"The CSIRO model ... has been involved in all of these international modelling activities that have contributed immensely to the IPCC's understanding of climate change, and that would be cut dramatically," he said.
The cuts would also make it hard for the government to achieve the best results for Australia at international negotiations.
"When the government prepares to go to the conferences annually where they discuss climate change policy – and negotiate, as they did in Paris this last year – they need advice," he said.
"And I think cutting the efforts at the CSIRO will undermine the government's ability to really represent its own self-interest at those negotiations because they would lose the advice of the experts there."
Paul Durack, also from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said it did not make sense to cut from work on understanding climate change in order to shift towards work on adaptation and mitigation.
He said the IPCC process demonstrated the problem with that logic. In that process, the IPCC publishes three chapters or "working groups". The first is on the physical basis of climate change. The other two, which focus on the impacts and how to mitigate and adapt to them, are published later, and rely on the information published in the first chapter.
"The way it occurs very much highlights the dependence between these different working groups and the requirement to actually have physical information about the climate system," Durack said. "You can't do these things independently and they're very much dependent on one another."
David Karoly, from the University of Melbourne, told the committee the decision would be wasting millions of dollars of investment in expertise.
"My estimate is it is of the order of 1,000 person years of experience or more," he said. "And that's at least $100m of investment. And it appears to be thrown away or put into a rubbish bin."
Snow Barlow, from the University of Melbourne, works on climate change adaptation and mitigation. He told the committee it was a mistake to take resources away from monitoring and modelling climate change to focus on adaptation and mitigation: "It's a catastrophic failure in public policy."
In a hearing on Wednesday, the same committee heard the CSIRO's international reputation had already been "trashed" by the announced cuts, and a new science body was needed.
Earlier, a report by the Climate Council said the cuts would breach Australia's obligations under the recent Paris climate change agreement.
The CSIRO's chief executive, Larry Marshall, said in a radio interview last month the reaction to his planned cuts was more like religion than science, and compared climate science with the oil lobby in the 1970s. He later apologised for the reference to religion.

Links

• CSIRO's global reputation 'trashed' and new science body needed, Senate told
• CSIRO chief confirms climate modelling and monitoring jobs to be halved
• Australia's chief scientist says he was not warned about CSIRO climate cuts
• CSIRO climate cuts attack a national treasure when we need it most
• CSIRO climate cuts will cost Australia dear, world scientists warn government
• Senior CSIRO scientist derides chief executive's claim climate change is 'answered'
• After climate cuts at CSIRO, who should we ask about global warming impacts on Australia? Netflix?
• CSIRO chief says row over climate science cuts 'more like religion than science'