NOAA Shows El Nino Yet to Have Full Impact on Global Temperatures — More Severe Warming During 2015 Likely in Store
19
June, 2015
2014
was the hottest year in the global climate record. It was a year when
El Nino failed to get off the ground. And it was a year when CO2
levels were at or near 400 parts per million for most of the period.
Each
of these points should be a matter of concern, especially as we
confront a yet hotter year during 2015 in the face of a ramping El
Nino and continually rising greenhouse gas concentrations from fossil
fuel burning. Conditions that will likely continue to push record
global heat toward ever more disturbing thresholds.
First
Five Months of 2015 Hottest on Record; El Nino is Still Ramping Up
The
most recent NOAA
global analysis report and
related updates highlight this potential and growing risk. First,
NOAA data shows that the initial five months of 2015 were the hottest
on record by a substantial margin. Hitting 0.85 C above the 20th
Century average, this global heatwave beat out the previous hottest
such period during 2010 by a substantial +0.09 C margin.
(NOAA
shows extreme high temperature departures for the first five months
of 2015. Image source: NOAA’s
Global Analysis.)
These
temperatures, basically 1.05 degrees Celsius above 1880s values in
the NOAA measure, represent an extreme departure beyond norms over
the past few thousands years and almost certainly exceed maximum
Holocene values — putting the current age of human fossil fuel
based warming in a context similar to the Eemian of 150,000 years
ago. A context that is all the more dangerous and troubling due to a
massive greenhouse gas overburden not seen in at least 3 million
years and a very rapid ramping of overall global temperatures. A pace
of warming and greenhouse gas accumulation possibly never seen in all
the Earth’s deep history.
Of
particular interest to the 2015 climate situation, however, is the
fact that though 2010 was also an El Nino year and though 2015 has
already hit significant positive temperature departures during its
first five months, 2010 had already seen most of the El Nino heat
build it was likely to experience by May. The Equatorial Pacific,
during May of 2010 was starting a multi-month cool-down into La Nina.
By contrast, 2015 is still ramping up to an El Nino event that, in
some measures, is already stronger than the El Nino experienced
during 2010. As a result, we are likely to see greater high
temperature departures due to a ramping heat bleed coming off the
Pacific as the months of 2015 continue to progress.
To
this point NOAA notes:
The first five months of 2015 were the warmest such period on record across the world’s land and ocean surfaces, at 0.85°C (1.53°F) above the 20th century average, surpassing the previous record set in 2010 by 0.09°C (0.16°F). Consequently, 2010 was the last year with El Niño conditions; however El Niño was ending at this point in 2010, while it appears to be maturing at the same point in 2015.
NOAA’s
ONI Adjustment Hints that Impact of Human Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Was Greater, El Nino Less
Another
issue is that NOAA also recently adjusted its Ocean
Nino Index (ONI) downward
for late 2014 and early 2015. ONI measures the intensity of El Nino
by taking account of sea surface temperatures in the Central Pacific.
What this means is that the slow start to the current El Nino was
even slower and weaker than initially indicated. As a result,
according to NOAA, El Nino’s variability-based influence of the
record global temperatures experienced during 2014 and early 2015 was
consequently less and the human greenhouse gas forcing’s impact was
consequently more.
To
this point it is important to emphasize that 2014 was not technically
an El Nino year, yet new record high temperatures were experienced
during that time. This is notable in that it implies the human heat
forcing through greenhouse gas emissions is playing an ever greater
role — crowding out the old signals and fluxes inherent to base
natural global temperature variability.
Outside
extreme weather events that are an upshot of this mangled variability
have abounded during the first five months of 2015. During May, the
State of Alaska experienced a massive temperature departure of 7
degrees Fahrenheit above average. Heat
that has helped to set off a spate of extreme wildfires that now risk
hazardous air quality for numerous Alaskan cities.
(Bob
taking on the features of an organized cyclone over a water-logged
Central US in yesterday’s MODIS shot. As of Thursday, some sections
of Oklahoma has received a staggering 3 feet of rainfall in just six
weeks. Image source: LANCE
MODIS.)
The
added heat appears to have also complicated normal El Nino
variability by more greatly enhancing rainfall over affected regions
than is typical. The Central US, in particular, has felt the brunt of
this impact. During May, massive rainfall events brought flooding to
Texas and Oklahoma. Sections of Oklahoma, as of yesterday, had
experienced an unprecedented 3 feet of rain in just six weeks. A
typical summer El Nino would somewhat enhance rainfall in this
region. But not to the degree that we are seeing now. So
the global warming-based amplification of the hydrological cycle is
also likely in play. In
this case, we see global warming and El Nino acting in concert to
increase the likelihood of very extreme weather.
Though
NOAA reports its data in a responsible, matter of fact, manner, it is
important to consider the unprecedented nature of that information.
What we are seeing is record warm years that occur increasingly
outside the influence of El Nino, the ability of moderate El Nino
heat flux to generate significant record global high temperature
departures, and a tendency of strong El Nino periods to push global
heating toward terrific ranges. These are all indications of an Earth
System that is ranging ever more out of a context that the human
beings and the creatures of this world are adapted to live in.
Indications that we are rapidly moving toward a dangerous and
extinction event producing Hothouse Climate. In this very rapid
initial warming the likelihood of dangerous weather — heatwaves,
fires, heavy rainfall events, intense storms — is thus increased.
In addition, the push toward dangerous geophysical changes such as
more rapid glacial melt and associated sea level rise becomes that
much more intense and imminent.
Media
Fails to Responsibly Report Warnings from Scientists, Religious
Leaders
The
NOAA report is a signal of a condition of increasing climate crisis
that should be reported widely and with all due urgency. By contrast,
the tendency of global media (especially the individually-owned
megamedia monopolies such as NewsCorp) to downplay, to sweep such
reports under the rug, to attack such reports outright, or to only
portray them in the most narrow of contexts is therefore vastly and
unforgivably irresponsible (shout out to noted exceptions like The
Guardian or underground and peripheral sources like RealClimate,
WeatherUnderground, The Independent, The Arctic Sea Ice Blog,
Dot.Earth and ThinkProgress).
The
global scientific community and major
religious leaders like the Pope (see
the Pope’s loud and clear urging for global climate action here)
are well aware of the situation and the calls for action from these
responsible, moral leaders are growing louder and more urgent. The
failure of media to appropriately relay that call and to generate
action on the part of the public can only be seen, at this point, as
an aspect of a dangerous allegiance to destructive and amoral
businesses (fossil fuel industry), to individual interests who have a
financial stake in a larger failure to respond to this crisis, and to
political ideologies that are so filled with hubris as to be blind to
an obvious and ramping existential crisis. Media, in this case, has
thus become complicit in a failure to appropriately act, enhancing
the intensity of the crisis, reducing the effectiveness of the
response, and worsening the harm and increasing loss of life and
livelihood to follow. A continuation of this failure would constitute
nothing less than complicity in climate change denial and related
harms. History, should history remain in tact following a failure to
fully respond, will judge such a failure in the harshest possible
terms.
Links:
Hat
Tip to Tom Cobbler
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